


Harmless Observation

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Bromance, Consent Issues, Drinking, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Loneliness, M/M, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:13:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fusco thinks he's being followed by a man in a suit. He's right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt that I will now paraphrase for your benefit, because I no longer have the original text: "Finch gives Reese some time off; Reese gets bored and decides to annoy Fusco forever. They bond and Reese/Fusco happens." This is not quite that.

Fusco thinks he’s being followed by a man in a suit.

These days, he thinks this a lot.

That’s reasonable, isn’t it? After all, sometimes it’s true. Not most of the time, but every so often. Once somebody bursts into your life like that, tears down everything you thought you knew, and leaves you alone and friendless in dangerous territory, he thinks you can be forgiven for looking over your shoulder from time to time. Always looking for a man in a good suit and a dark coat lurking behind you like the specter of death.

But he’s not paranoid. Someone once said to him that it’s not paranoia if everyone actually is out to get you. Fusco’s willing to concede that not everyone is out to get him. But a few people, maybe. The criminals he used to shake down. The corrupt cops he’s trying to bust. The man in the suit.

On a bad day, he sees them in the corner of his eye every time he goes outside.

He thought today was a good day, but here he is, stuck in traffic on the way home, and he keeps spotting pieces of a dangerous man every time he glances in the rearview mirror.

Fusco likes to think he isn’t losing it. He hopes that if he does start losing it, Reese never finds out. He knows that he is definitely losing it because, stalled at a red light and breathing in exhaust fumes, he decides to call him.

“Lionel,” Reese says, voice smooth and untroubled. “This is a surprise.” He doesn’t sound surprised. He sounds coldly amused. Fusco wants to ask him what’s so fucking funny all the time.

Instead he asks, “Is there something you need?”

There’s a pause. Maybe he’s a little taken aback. “Something _I_ need? You called me.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I can’t help but notice that you’ve been following me around since I left the precinct.” He adjusts his rearview mirror to look for him, thinks he catches a glimpse of him leaning against a phone booth, but when he checks again there’s no one there. “So I was wondering if maybe you needed something.”

“Good job, Lionel,” he says. There’s that edge of mockery in his voice, that condescension that makes Fusco want to fight him even though he knows he can’t. “I didn’t think you could see me. No, I’m just checking in.”

“Great, hey, here’s a thought.” Fusco rubs at his brow, fights off a headache. “Maybe next time you wonder how I’m doing, you could just call me. You know, talk to me. Instead of following me around like a serial killer.”

“It’s a nice thought, Lionel. But given your history, I’m not sure you’d be honest with me.”

“Hey, when have I ever lied to you?” he asks. There’s a long, crackling pause. Fusco hears the sounds of traffic echoing in his ear and knows that he has to be someplace close by. “Anyway, you might as well come up and talk to me if I’m just going to pick you out of the crowd every time.”

Finally, Reese asks, sounding almost innocent, like he’s just tossing out an offhand comment, “Do you really think I’ve only been following you since you left the precinct?”

A cold, solid weight settles in the pit of Fusco’s stomach.

“Have a nice evening, Lionel.” Reese hangs up.

The light changes and Fusco moves along with the flow of traffic, phone still pressed to his ear. He’s not sure what he’s listening for. Confirmation that he isn’t going crazy, maybe, that he’s not going to turn into some paranoid shut-in who can’t leave the house because there’re too many goddamn bogeymen out there.

All the way home, he checks his mirrors. He knows he won’t find anything, but he has to look.

***

The worst of it is, after that he keeps seeing him.

This isn’t new, not exactly. Reese always did things like this; popping up in the backseat of his car, turning up at crime scenes just to say hi, appearing out of nowhere with a quip and a threat. But never this frequently. Never without a job for him to do.

Never at this level of intense scrutiny.

Usually, he feels like he’s being tested. Like he’s being measured up as a decent human being and always, always found lacking.

(And he _wants_ to measure up, doesn’t he? Wants it so bad it’s pathetic, cringing on his knees begging for some kind of absolution, for someone to tell him he’s doing good. Except it’s not just someone, it’s _him_. He wants the man in the suit to tell him he’s done the right thing; that it’s over; that he doesn’t have to hate himself anymore. Wants it so much that if he didn’t have his pride, he’d ask for it. He knows that he’ll never get it, he might never deserve it, but sometimes the aching _want_ gets to be so terrible it keeps him up at night.)

He doesn’t feel like he’s being measured anymore. Just examined, like a bug in a jar. No judgment being made; he’s just being seen for what he is.

In some ways, that’s worse.

The tipping point comes on the day when he’s hauled into an interrogation room, one of the little dingy ones with “faulty” security cameras and blood soaked deep in the floor. He’s just dragged in as he’s walking past, and he thinks “Oh God, they know, they know,” but then he sees who has him and just thinks “Oh God, he’s insane.”

Reese pushes him back against the rough cement block wall, one hand braced against his chest, the other clamped over his mouth. He whispers harsh in his ear, “I am going to uncover your mouth, and you’re not going to say a word until you’re spoken to.”

It all happens as he predicted.

“Have a seat,” Reese says, guiding him towards the rickety metal folding chair. Fusco sits down, palms flat on the table. The tabletop is riddled with dents, and he realizes he is mimicking the perps that get dragged in here every day. He has never been on this side of things before.

Reese looms over him on the opposite side, hands mirroring Fusco’s. “You said you had HR’s major players figured out.” He leans in close across the table. “Go.”

Fusco’s jaw drops slightly. “Are you kidding me?”

“Frequently,” he says. “But not today.”

“Is there some reason we couldn’t talk about this on the phone?”

“Lionel,” he says, voice low and drawn out like a warning. He’s making Fusco dread the sound of his own name.

“I don’t know,” he continues, “It just seems like something that might have come up one of the five or ten times I called you offering this exact information.”

Reese’s head tilts slightly to one side; one of his hands curls into a fist. He looks annoyed. Fusco’s past caring.

“Or, you know, maybe if it was so fucking important that this happen in person, you could have asked me to meet you somewhere, or caught me on the way home, or met me at my apartment, since you obviously know where I live. Really, anything other than hauling me into a room where people have been murdered and scaring the shit out of me. Anything other than that would have been OK.”

Reese reaches out and seizes Fusco under the chin, forcing eye contact. He gives Fusco a very long stare, and it’s at this point that Fusco notices for the first time how tired he looks, the lines and shadows under his eyes. Finally he says, in this sober, matter-of-fact tone, “Some days I just want to kill you and save us both the trouble. Other days, I can’t bear the thought. Why do you think that is?”

Fusco can’t hope to answer that. He wants to ask what kind of day today is. He wants to ask what the prevailing feeling is. Instead he asks, voice thick and harsh with disgust, “What are you, bored?”

Reese considers. “You might be right,” he says. “I might be very, very bored.”

The idea seems to profoundly unsettle the both of them.

Fusco closes his eyes, relaxes in Reese’s grip, tries as hard as he can to project “You win; you win” without actually having to make himself say the words. It takes a long while, but eventually Reese lets go of his jaw and allows Fusco to settle back into the chair. Fusco tells him everything.

At the end of the day, he leaves his car behind. He walks, he takes the subway, he takes cabs. His route drags him through every borough, some twice. He steps off in strange places just for the hell of it, grabs dinner at a place he’s never heard of and it’s bizarre and terrible, but it’s great. What he creates is the longest, most convoluted commute ever devised by man. When he gets home at an ungodly hour, he collapses into bed and vows never to take the subway again unless he absolutely has to, which he will tomorrow because he left his fucking car.

When he gets to work the next day, there’s a goddamn flower arrangement on his desk. Not a big thing, just a handful of fat white roses in a bowl of water. There’s a card. It reads, “Thanks for trying.”

Across the desk, Carter raises an eyebrow. “You got a girlfriend, Fusco?”

He laughs a little. “No,” he says as he tears the card in half.

“Boyfriend?”

“Jesus Christ, I hope not.”


	2. Chapter 2

That little stunt actually makes things better, for a while. Reese starts calling him asking for the usual brand of shifty information and illegal favors, and Fusco’s only too happy to supply it because he misses when things were normal.

The day when Fusco realizes that this, _this_ , has become his normal is a very bad day.

But it’s only a bad day because he doesn’t understand how much worse things can get. Reese’s calls get more infrequent, and at first it’s great because he has time to focus on his real job, time to devote to HR. For the first time in months, he feels like he can be seen in public with his kid without painting a bullseye on Michael’s back. He’s not safe, exactly, but he’s stable. He can ride this out a while, as long as he keeps his head down.

So when he starts getting that feeling again, that itch between his shoulder blades, that terrible nervous pull somewhere deep in his chest, that feeling like he’s being followed by a man in a suit, he knows it’s for real.

It doesn’t take as long for him to pick up the phone this time.

“Good morning, Lionel,” Reese says airily. It’s 6 AM. Fusco’s sitting slumped at his desk in the precinct, nursing last night’s hangover with a paper cup filled with the worst coffee money can buy. Reese is probably sipping a latte right now. _Fuck this guy_.

“No. No, it’s not a good morning,” he hisses into the phone. “We need to talk about boundaries. Or I need you to stop staking out my apartment.”

There’s an actual, audible smirk. “Lionel, I think you have an inflated idea of your own importance.”

“Maybe so. Stop parking across the street from my building all night and I’ll tone it down.”

Reese’s voice is thick with mock-concern. “You see a car parked across the street from your apartment and you assume that you’re under surveillance? Pretty paranoid of you. Have you thought about seeking help?”

“Yeah, a bunch of times,” Fusco says, leaning his head on his hand, cupping the phone close to his ear as Carter skims past his desk with her nose in a file. “But it _was_ you, wasn’t it?”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. It’s just quiet breathing on the end of the line. Fusco almost gives up and hangs up on him when Reese says, “Yeah.” His voice is soft and muddled, like he’s surprised at the answer himself.

Fusco feels relief, which is a different kind of surprise. “Why do you do that?” Fusco asks him.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I think I just feel responsible.”

“For what?”

“You?” He sounds deeply tired.

Fusco doesn’t think he’s equipped to handle this, whatever this is. “You’re not,” he says firmly under his breath. “You’re not responsible for me. I am responsible for me, because I am a grown-ass man.”

“I know.”

They sit in uncomfortable silence, listening to each other’s background noise. It sounds like Reese is somewhere outside, somewhere with cars and people. Somewhere that isn’t here.

Good.

“Are you going to stake out my apartment again tonight?” he asks.

Reese is awfully, tellingly silent.

“Get a hobby, guy.”

“I’m sorry, Lionel.” He sounds like he’s lost somewhere.

Fusco’s thumb shifts over the button that will end the call, but he hesitates, makes a horrible decision, cringes as he speaks. “Listen,” he says. “I’m picking up Thai food on the way home.”

Silence. “You’re…?”

“I’m bringing home dinner. You can come up and join me, or you can go out and do whatever it is you do when you’re not following me around. Any of that in-between stalker shit? I start making noise.”

“That’s neighborly of you, Lionel,” Reese says. His usual hushed, smoothed-over, mocking tones are back, and Fusco immediately regrets extending the invitation to this smug asshole. “I’ll think it over. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Why do you use my first name so much?”

The call ends with a sudden blip.

Fusco thinks he might have won.

Then he remembers the invitation.

***

He’s not really sure what to expect when he gets home, plastic take-out bag in hand. Reese could be there. He could not. He could fail to show up in person but call Fusco, one of those unsettling calls where he seems to know just what Fusco’s doing.

If Reese does that last one, Fusco will have to do something, because he said he would. He can’t just lie down and take it, not after that. If he doesn’t get Reese to leave him alone now, he never will. This poses a problem, because Fusco knows it’s an empty threat. It’s not like he can go to the police, to HR. They’d want to know how it all started, who Reese is to him, and that’s a road he’s not prepared to go down because that road ends in either prison or death, and Fusco isn’t interested in either.

He guesses he could call Finch, but Fusco just isn’t sure he’d care.

It’s a load off his mind when he opens up his apartment door and there’s no one there.

He sets the take-out on his coffee table, breathes a sigh of profound relief. His shoulders sag, his heartbeat slows, but there’s this nervous prickle at the back of his neck so he winds up going through every room in the apartment, hand resting lightly on the grip of his handgun.

He’s not going to draw it. It’s his home, for God’s sake.

But still.

But every room is as he left it. There’s still a load of dishes in the sink, still soap scum in the bathroom, still unmade covers on his bed and dresser drawers hanging wide open in his own bedroom, still the quiet unease of a space half-lived-in in his son’s room.

It’s still just him.

He steps out of Michael’s room, turns to face the living room, and almost jumps out of his skin when he finds Reese sitting on his couch, casually, like he belongs there. He’s digging through the take-out bag in an ineffectual sort of way, like he’s starving but holding off out of politeness. Reese glances up at him, and for a moment there’s a strange, earnest light in his eyes.

“Which one’s mine?” he asks, holding up a Styrofoam carton.

Fusco’s leaning against the wall, still blindsided. “Don’t you _knock_?”

 “Not really my style,” he says. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You invited me.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d show.” Fusco’s heart rate is finally something like normal, and he tries to walk into the living room like someone who isn’t in a shooting mood. He stops and grabs two forks and two beers from the kitchen as he walks through. That helps. That’s an ordinary thing.

He situates himself on the opposite end of the couch, passes Reese a fork and a beer. Reese gives him the bag in return and Fusco starts dividing up the spoils. “If you didn’t think I’d show up,” Reese asks, “then why’d you buy extra food?”

“Shut up and eat your dinner,” Fusco says, jamming a container into Reese’s hands.

There’s about five minutes of silence between them, just the squeak of Styrofoam as their forks scrape against the side of containers. Fusco realizes he’s not being scrutinized, not even being judged. Reese isn’t even looking at him, he’s just eating. Which is weird; incongruous is probably the five dollar word.

If the man in the suit eats, that means he’s probably human.

And he’s sitting there, eating pad Thai on Fusco’s couch, drinking Fusco’s beer, and he looks fucking _haggard_. It’s not something Fusco’s ever noticed about him, not something he’s even capable of noticing because sometimes he can’t even bring himself to look at this guy for longer than he has to, but Reese looks like complete shit. Dark circles, ashy skin, subtly disheveled suit. That kind of bright-eyed, manic twitch you see in junkies. And Fusco’s not blind; he knows that the man in the suit is a good-looking guy. It probably takes a lot for him to look like complete shit.

“Rough night?” he asks, because he’s not sure how else to talk about the fact that there’s something wrong with Reese.

Reese laughs, flat and cold. “You mean the night I spent parked across the street, spying on you? Was that rough?” He pauses, swallows a quick mouthful of beer. “Not comparatively, no.”

“You want to explain that?”

“No.” He twirls a noodle around his fork. “Maybe. I think I have to.” He takes a long, slow breath. “I just moved into a new apartment,” he says.

Fusco keeps quiet, lets him work his way to the next part of the explanation, realizes it’s not forthcoming. “Is that supposed to be an excuse? ‘Cause it’s not good enough.”

“It’s a nice apartment. Finch bought it for me. It’s better than anything I would have picked for myself, but I only need a place to sleep, I don’t want…” He coughs. “I don’t need that kind of space.”

“Sorry your apartment’s so big. That’s a fucking tragedy.”

Reese ignores him.

“The real problem is, business is drying up. Not permanently; there’re always going to be murders, but sometimes we get…dry spells. As far as information goes. And there’s nothing for us to do but wait. And when we do get information, it’s over too quickly. We’re getting too good at this. Making less work for ourselves.” He’s grinding the tines of the fork into the bottom of the container. “I can’t be in that apartment, Lionel. Not for that long, not with nothing to do or think about. I’ll start climbing the walls.”

Fusco takes a thoughtful bite of his drunken noodles. “You’re going crazy in your apartment, so you come around to my place and drive me crazy in my apartment?”

Reese gives a weak little shrug. “Not exactly. I just need a simple problem to focus on.” He leans forward. That earnest light is back. “You’re very uncomplicated.”

“Fuck you too, buddy.” Fusco sits further back on the couch, turns so he’s not looking at him.

The uncomfortable pause returns. “I meant that as a compliment.”

“Yeah, OK.”

They return to their meals, and Fusco realizes that it’s not the same uncomfortable silence at all. It’s closer, more fragile.

“So,” Reese says, suddenly. “Pad Thai, huh?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know what you wanted…”

“You didn’t ask.”

“…and I didn’t really care, so I thought, ‘Who the hell doesn’t like pad Thai?’”

They’re watching each other out of the corners of their eyes, both refusing to look, refusing to break, resolutely facing the blank TV. “I could have been allergic to peanuts. You don’t know.”

“Yeah, but you’re not.”

“But if I had been.”

“Then you’d be dead,” Fusco says. “And all of my problems would be solved.”

He can’t tell, because he’s still refusing to look at Reese dead on, but Fusco thinks Reese might be shielding a smile with one hand. Fusco clears his throat, starts to rise. “I’m getting another beer. Put something on.” He nudges the remote towards Reese.

“Put what on?” Reese calls after him as he goes into the kitchen.

“I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

They end up watching some kind of bizarre, disjointed, self-imposed clip show as Reese flicks through channels at random, clicking away whenever he becomes bored or annoyed, which doesn’t take long. “How did it get so much worse?” he asks.

Fusco is finally making himself comfortable, losing the jacket and the holstered gun. He’s got his finger resting on the knot of his tie and is loosening it when he says, “How are you just finding out about this now?”

“I don’t own a TV,” he admits. “Haven’t for years.”

“See, this is why you stalk people. Buy a TV, watch a Knicks game sometime. You’ll sleep better.”

He’s not sure when it is, but at some point he falls asleep himself. He didn’t think he could do that, just doze off while his mortal enemy sits next to him on the sofa, but he does.

He’s woken up twice. The first time, it’s some sharp noise from the TV that pulls him out of sleep. His eyes flicker open and Reese is looking him right in the face and his expression is so overwhelmingly fond that it hurts a little. Reese’s hand is resting on the side of Fusco’s face; his thumb drags over the ridge of his cheekbone. “Go back to sleep, Lionel.”

He does. He can’t not.

The second time, he’s not sure why he wakes up. It might be a lack of input this time, because the TV’s off and he’s alone, lying on his side on the couch. He gets up, goes to the kitchen, finds empty beer bottles on the counter and his leftovers boxed up in the fridge. Reese is gone.

He returns to the couch to pick up his clothes, because if he only has a few hours to sleep before his ex drops Michael off for the weekend, he’s spending them in his actual bed. It’s at this point that he notices a note sitting on the coffee table, scrawled on the back of a receipt.

It reads, “Next time, my order is Massaman curry.”

Fusco crumples the note. He tells himself there won’t be a next time.

He can’t stop smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

From the beginning, Fusco knew there was no real way to prevent this from getting weird. This situation is all about weird. There’s no avoiding it. But they do a half-decent job at first.

He can’t always know for sure, but he’s fairly certain that Reese doesn’t follow him around anymore. Not more than is strictly professional, anyway. Just the usual stuff; requests for favors and information. Fusco doesn’t know all the details (he never knows all the details), but from what he gathers, some of the cases they’ve worked have even been interesting. Reese is energetic and well-rested. There’s a spark back in his eye. No, he’s not following Fusco around anymore.

But every couple of weeks, he’ll turn up at Fusco’s apartment.

They try not to discuss it, because that’s a sure way to make the both of them uncomfortable, but through trial and error, they manage to create a system of rules. Reese dictates when these little get-togethers happen, and to make it sort of even, Reese buys the food. Fusco spends the extra cash on better beer, and they’re both happy. Reese must knock on the door before entering. Reese fights that one, and Fusco eventually adds a proviso where, if Reese believes that his continued presence loitering in the hallway poses a threat to either of their safety, he is permitted to break in. It’s a loophole Reese exploits far too often, but Fusco’s developing an ear for the sounds of Reese picking the lock, and after a while it’s as good as a knock.

One rule they both agree on is that Fusco is allowed to turn Reese away at any time for any reason. He threatens to make use of this rule every once and a while, but he never actually has.

It’s a decent system. It’s comfortable, self-maintaining. Fusco doesn’t realize how easily his life has been infiltrated until the day he comes home, unlocks his door, and finds Reese dead asleep on the couch. The worst of it is, it takes a solid minute of domestic quiet, of stripping off his tie, jacket and shoes, of peering into the fridge and wondering whether it’s worth the effort to cook dinner tonight, of trying to figure out of it’s this weekend or next that he needs to stock up on food that Michael will eat when it suddenly occurs to Fusco that actually, Reese shouldn’t be asleep on his couch at all.

Once it registers, he takes a deep breath, closes the refrigerator door, grabs his cell phone on the way out of his apartment, but forgets to bring his shoes. He makes the call in the stairwell.

“Detective Fusco,” Finch says, sounding disinterested and annoyed. “What reason could you possibly have for calling me?”

“I got home from work today, and your guy was taking a nap in my apartment.”

On the other end of the line, Fusco hears the slow, crackling drag of Finch’s breath. “Hmm,” he says, very carefully. “Is this usual?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I do have a modicum of respect for Mr. Reese’s private life. What he does on his time off is entirely his business. That said,” Finch continues, “I had hoped he’d be doing something more productive with his time. Less felonious, anyway.”

“Yeah, about that,” Fusco says. “Kind of why I brought this up. Can you get him to stop breaking into my apartment so much? I got him to quit tailing me at work, but he won’t stop with the B&E.”

“How often does he do this?” Finch asks. His voice is calm, measured, but Fusco thinks he can detect just a note of alarm.

“About once a month. He’s here more like twice a month, but sometimes he remembers to knock.”

Finch clears his throat. “I’ll talk to him about it. That’s no guarantee of results, of course, but I’ll bring it up.”

“Thanks. Um.” Fusco leans against the metal rail, listens to his “um” bounce along the concrete walls of the stairwell. “What do I do with him?”

“Whatever you like, Detective,” Finch says. “It’s your couch.”

Fusco ends the call, takes a long breath. This worries him more than the breaking and entering, if he’s honest. He knows it’s childish, but he had this idea that Finch knew everything, that no piece of information could escape his neurotic, tightly-wound mind. It makes Fusco wonder what Reese thinks he’s doing here that needs to be kept a secret. He returns to the apartment and finds things as he left them, Reese still draped sleepily across his couch.

“I know you’re faking it,” Fusco tells him as he closes the door and draws the deadbolt.

Reese tightens his grip on a couch cushion and his eyes slip open. “Hello, Lionel,” he says as he lifts his head. He stretches like a cat, gives a thin smile that doesn’t show his teeth but goes straight to his eyes.

Fusco finds that he has a temporary cotton-mouth problem, and it takes him a moment to speak. “What’re you doing here?”

“I hadn’t been around for a while,” he says, sitting up. The weave of the couch cushions’ fabric is imprinted in pink on his perfect skin. “I wanted to check up on you.”

Fusco wrenches his eyes away, because every time he looks at Reese, smiling like that, he forgets why he’s angry. “That’s fine, but call me first. That’s all, just let me know and I won’t get pissed off.” He goes into the kitchen, starts rolling up his sleeves.

“Are you pissed off now?” Reese asks from what sounds like right behind him, so close Fusco thinks he might feel Reese’s breath on the back of his neck, or maybe it’s just his panicked brain going haywire, making things worse.

“Yeah, a little,” Fusco says, refusing to turn around. He gets a big pot out of a low cupboard, starts filling it with water at the sink. “I don’t mind having you around, you know? I’ve had worse company.”

“Not exactly a high bar.”

“Shut up. I like having you over, alright? I just need you to not scare the shit out of me all the time.”

Reese responds with “Hmm.” Just a warm, agreeable little hum and something about it goes straight to Fusco’s chest. He lets himself turn and sees Reese, standing with both hands on the back of a kitchen chair, looking at him with such open affection in his face that it’s almost unsettling.

Fusco asks him, “Why are you here, really?”

Almost immediately the look dims and Reese rolls his shoulders, glances down at his shoes, and when he looks up it’s the same flatly amused expression he always has. “I just wanted to see you.” He’s trying to sound nonchalant, but it still comes off as a confession.

They’ve wandered into strange, raw territory now, and Fusco wants out. “I’m cooking tonight. Help out and I’ll let you stay.”

Reese shrugs off his jacket, starts to roll up his shirtsleeves. “Didn’t know you cooked, Lionel.”

“Of course I do. I’m not a caveman.”

As Reese joins him at the counter, Fusco thinks about the aspects of this bizarre non-friendship that still manage to scare him a little, the ones that he couldn’t bring himself to mention to Finch. The pervasive staring. The incidental touches that last always last about a second too long. The use of his first name, over and over, syllable by syllable.

He used to be embarrassed in those moments when he’d fall asleep with his head resting on Reese’s shoulder, feel a little vulnerable and shaky and make himself endure Reese’s barely restrained grin. He _used_ to be embarrassed. Then he found out that Reese engineers those moments, wraps an arm around his shoulder and pulls Fusco flush against his side, tucks Fusco’s head beneath his chin. Sometimes he throws both arms around him and hauls Fusco close to him, until they’re curled around each other like a parody of intimacy, and he won’t let go for hours.

Fusco knows this because he pretends to be asleep sometimes.

He pretends to be asleep a lot, actually.

He doesn’t bring it up because he’s terrified of what will happen, of Reese’s reaction, because he knows that Reese has to be lonely, just soul-crushingly lonely as fuck to do this at all, and Fusco thinks that if he makes it a problem, shames him, throws him out then he might be inviting violence or ending the friendship and he doesn’t want either. He just doesn’t want it to stop.

Loneliness. It’s catching.

***

He’s lurking in the underpass by the river, leaning on his car, waiting for the man in the suit to show up and shake him down. He still thinks of it like that, even now. It doesn’t matter that the man in the suit becomes _Reese_ when he turns up at Fusco’s apartment some nights, eyes haunted and needy. Outside of those nights, and peculiar breaks in character when Reese suddenly goes shy and says something like “How’s this Friday?”, Fusco’s still getting treated like a criminal. Well, he _is_ a criminal. He just doesn’t like to think about it. Sometimes, especially after he’s done something really good, that part of his life seems like it happened a long time ago to somebody else.

 Fusco’s got his eyes closed, listening to the water and the drone of cars and the distant sounds of normal people, when Reese’s hand clamps down on the back of his neck and ruins everything. “Jesus Christ, _ow_.”

“What did you say to Finch?” Reese asks, standing just behind Fusco. His voice is soft and he’s enunciating carefully. He’s pissed. Fusco wonders how he managed to walk this close over gravel without making a sound. Begrudgingly, he opens his eyes. Reese is too close, eyes full of murk and shadow and barely concealed anger. But his grip relaxes, becomes a gentle squeeze before releasing him entirely. Reese’s arm drops lamely to his side. His eyes are still dark.

Fusco thinks he knows exactly what kind of day it is. He tries not to show he’s a little afraid, but he looks down and catches himself white-knuckling the door handle. “I told him you were breaking into my apartment and I wanted you to stop. He said he’d bring it up with you. I guess he did.”

“You should have come to me first.” His guarded tone cracks, a flicker of anger breaks through.

“I did. You didn’t care, so I went for outside help. If I knew it was supposed to be some kind of secret…”

Reese snarls, “There’s nothing secret about it,” and Fusco wonders if he touched a nerve.

They stare each other down, postures stiff and aggressive but inactive, faces carefully constructed so that even they don’t know how they feel.  Eventually Reese is the one who blinks. He wilts, looks down like he’s not sure where he is. He doesn’t say sorry.

Fusco’s hand relaxes on the door handle, surprised he won that one. “What did he have to say?” he asks.

“He’s concerned,” Reese mutters.

“Should he be?”

Reese doesn’t answer, and eventually Fusco prompts him, “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah.” Reese brushes a hand over his eyes, turns to face Fusco. “I want to talk to you about work.”

These days, when Reese can’t find enough people to save, work means HR and Reese couldn’t give less of a fuck if Fusco has enough time in the day to do his actual job or not. These days, when Reese is breathing down his neck in this new, frightening way, HR means endless pushing.

Fusco steels himself, prepares for the onslaught. “What about work?”

“What have you found?”

“It’s nothing new,” he says. “Same old shit. Shakedowns and stolen goods. I get told to go to a place and meet a guy who hands me a suitcase I’m not supposed to open. The usual spy versus spy crap. Word from up top is that we’re just interested in maintaining what we’ve got. Personally, I think we’re trying not to make too much noise in case Elias’ guys decide to get some revenge.”

“You haven’t learned anything new?” Reese asks. It’s a question that sounds like it should be accusatory, but isn’t.

Fusco shrugs. “You know how this is. I can’t always be climbing the ladder. Sometimes I have to stop, build up some trust. I need them to buy me as a stand-up guy. And I don’t want to look too eager; that’s how you get stuck doing…” He trails off. He can’t say it, not even here.

“Drives out to Oyster Bay?” Reese asks casually.

“Yeah.”

Reese smiles to himself, creating creases around his eyes that make him look soft and approachable and not like a predator. “I haven’t been back since,” he says, wistfully. Then, “I don’t want you to do that again.”

“I don’t either, believe me,” Fusco says. He remembers the last night at Oyster Bay, the dark, the cold, his partner’s bloodless flesh disappearing under shovelfuls of sand. He can’t. “What happens if it comes down to that?” he asks. “If it comes down to me taking that step or breaking cover?”

Reese shakes his head. “You won’t have to make that decision. If things ever go that far, you’ll be extracted.”

“What the hell does that mean? For me, I mean,” he says when Reese gives him a sidelong glance and opens his mouth a little like he’s winding up to get sarcastic. “Not generally.”

“It’s best that you don’t know.” Reese says. “For your own safety.”

“ _Now_ you’re concerned about my safety. Sorry if I’m not totally with you on this, but you’ve been pretty fucking slapdash about my safety up until now.”

Reese’s face tightens. “You’re not in a position to complain about how I run this operation, Lionel. You’re alive because I allow you to be.”

He actually flinches at that, which is embarrassing. He likes to pretend that nothing Reese says can shock him anymore, that he’s heard too much creepy shit in the past several months for something like this to get a rise out of him. All the same it does, that leaden clump of fear and anger in his chest suddenly coiling and writhing. When he speaks, he doesn’t know his voice. It’s too calm, too weary. “No,” he says. “I’m alive because I’m good at what I do, and I’ve been loyal, and you need me. And I’m tired of getting treated like shit for wanting to know what’s going to happen to me.”

Reese moves so fast Fusco’s eyes don’t even register that movement happened until he’s already slammed against the car, Reese’s hands wrapped up in his lapels, body trapping him there against the door. Pressed cheek to cheek like they’re dancing, and he can hear Reese’s ragged, uneven breaths against his ear. “I could have you extracted right now,” he whispers.

“ _What?_ ”

“I could. Have you. Extracted. From HR. Right now, Lionel. You could get in the car and let me drive you to a safehouse, where you would be outfitted with a new identity: passport, credit cards, driver’s license, fishing license, whatever you need to get by. We’d write you a check, enough to get started somewhere else. You would have to leave the country, of course, someplace where no one is likely to recognize you. And if anyone did, Lionel, you would be moved again and again, however many times it took to keep you safe. You could never see anyone from your old life again, not a friend, not an enemy. No one but me. That’s what would happen, Lionel, and if you need me to do it, if you ask me to do it, I will do all of that for you _right now_.”

Fusco squirms beneath Reese, tries to shove him off, and Reese catches his wrists and pushes back so Fusco can look him in the eye. His still, handsome face is struggling under the weight of some unidentifiable emotion. Fusco would say it was rage, but he looks at Reese, at how unfathomably _sad_ he looks, and he just isn’t sure. He shakes his head. “I’m not going to ask that.”

Reese blinks, adjusts his grip on Fusco’s wrists. His head tilts at an inquisitive angle.

“I have to see this through,” he tries to explain, even though every meager cell in his brain is screaming at him to shut up and take the new identity. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I don’t feel safe. I haven’t felt safe in a long time, not since I met you.” Not since long before then. “But I have to see this to the end. I can’t live with myself if I don’t. And I can’t leave New York. I’m not leaving my son.”

Reese lets go of his wrists but doesn’t move, still pressed close, still looking at him like that. “You may be killed,” he says, so soft it’s near inaudible.

Just as softly, Fusco says, “We both know that.”

Now that he’s finally said it, he feels relief. He didn’t expect that either.

Reese takes a few steps back, lets Fusco right himself, tug his suit jacket back into place. He doesn’t seem to know where to look, focusing on a spot about a foot above Fusco’s head when he says, “He also said that whatever I did, I shouldn’t bring you to my apartment.”

“What?”

“Finch. When he spoke to me. He said it was fine if I went to your apartment sometimes, but he said I shouldn’t bring you back to my place. Because it’d be a security breach.” He’s trying so hard to sound normal, but he’s also struggling to ask Fusco for something, and Fusco just doesn’t want to understand.

“Were you planning on bringing me back to your place?” he asks.

So quietly it’s almost lost in the faint murmur of water and cars, Reese says “No.”

“Okay,” Fusco says. Deep breaths, _please let this go back to normal_. “No loss there, then.”

Reese nods, turns on his heel and starts walking away, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, gravel crunching beneath the soles of his shoes, and Fusco has to fight off a desperate, insane urge to call him back and ask him what the hell he meant.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter contains a moment that isn't attempted rape, but looks and feels a bit like it. If you might be triggered, maybe give this one a miss.

He lies back in the dark, hands clasped across his belly and he just can’t seem to sleep because the encounter in the underpass keeps playing over and over in his head. He didn’t do a thing wrong, he knows. He’s not blaming himself, but he can’t shake this feeling like he forgot to say something and it’s killing him.

He winds up just pacing around the apartment in bare feet with the lights off, wandering aimlessly from room to room because there’s something niggling at the back of his mind and if he can find it, it’ll stop and he can sleep again.

He can hear his cell phone buzzing on the kitchen counter, but he can’t bring himself to go to it.

He’s wondering if it’s because he admitted he’d be willing to die today. Sometimes he thinks that can’t be true, because look at how hard he’s worked to stay alive after everything that’s happened, but at the same time, he keeps coming back to this idea that he can’t walk away from HR or Reese or the things he did for Stills. He can’t get away clean.

Then he hears this faint clicking and scraping at his door, the click of metal on metal, metal on door, like a drunk trying to line up the key with the lock. These days, that’s as good as a knock to Fusco. He considers telling him to fuck off even as he takes the chain off the door and swings it open before Reese has a chance to.

Reese is on his knees in the hallway, lockpicks in hand. He glances up at Fusco, face almost sheepish. There’s a bottle of wine, about one third empty, sitting on the floor next to him, and Reese takes it in hand as he rises. He holds out the wine, presses the cold bottle against Fusco’s chest, and eventually Fusco takes it from him just to get him to stop doing that. “Got you something,” Reese says, finally.

“Yeah.” Fusco tilts the bottle a little, lets the wine slosh in the empty space. “Looks like you got to it first, though.”

“It’s been a difficult night,” Reese admits. “But I wanted to apologize.”

He actually does. Fusco can tell. He’s got that wobbly, stone-cold seriousness about him that philosophical drunks get. His eyes are very dark and deeply sad. He understands that this is only happening because Reese has been drinking, that Reese will be blunt and unapologetic as ever the next time they meet, but he’s wanted this for a long while and he’d like to hear it, just once. “Okay,” Fusco tells him. “Go.”

“I’ve.” Reese stalls almost immediately, puts a hand on the doorframe to steady himself, carries on. “I’ve been treading on your hospitality for a while now, Lionel. And I shouldn’t do that, because it’s made you uncomfortable in your own home. In your own,” he clears his throat, “life. And you’ve done terrible things, Lionel, but I’m not sure you deserve the things I do to you.” Reese looks him in the eye, blinks at him. “I’ll knock next time.”

Fusco raises an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry?” Reese adds.

“Yeah, that part was understood. I’m just trying to get over how you broke into my apartment to tell me you’d knock next time.”

Reese’s over-serious manner folds and crumples and he leans hard against the doorframe, smiling sleepily at him. “Force of habit,” he says.

Fusco sighs. “Are you coming in?”

“Do you want me to come in?” He’s not sure, but he thinks Reese might be trying to not sound so hopeful.

Fusco reaches out, grabs Reese’s sleeve before he can even register what a breach of protocol that is. And that’s bizarre on its own, isn’t it? That Reese manhandling Fusco is just another day at the office, but Fusco even touching Reese is a goddamn revolution. Reese is looking down at the spot where Fusco’s fingers are curling in his sleeve with drunken wonderment. Figuring he’s already gone this far, he pulls Reese through the door. “Get out of the hall, asshole. You’ll wake the neighbors.”

Reese actually grins at him, slings an arm around Fusco’s shoulders.

As it turns out, Fusco owns a set of wine glasses, which is just as big a shock to him as it is to Reese. They’re these big, cheap fishbowl things that they find tucked away in a high cupboard, untouched since Fusco moved. Fusco washes out the thick layer of dust from each, and Reese fills them up too high. It’s not a bad setup.

“It’s not usually for me,” Fusco tells him, lying back on the couch watching the warm glow of his living room lamp slip through the bowl of the glass, pretending the deep, jewel-bright color means something to him. “But this is something.”

On the other end of the couch, sitting upright, Reese makes a low, rumbling sound of agreement. “If I knew what kind of a year it was, I’d tell you. It’s from Finch’s private stash, so it’s good. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Really? Kind of thought you’d have half a clue.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ve got that whole James Bond thing going on; I don’t know.”

“That’s _martinis_ , Lionel.”

“Even so.”

They share a warm and playful silence, the crushing tension broken by a loose, friendly air of drunken agreement. Reese’s hand is resting on his shin. This, he thinks, is better than normal.

The prickle between his shoulder blades means that he’s being watched, so Fusco turns to see what Reese’s problem is. Reese is giving him this traveling look up and down that lasts about ten seconds too long, but somehow he almost forgets to be uncomfortable. “Did I wake you?” Reese asks, looking rather pointedly at Fusco’s clothes.

In a way, it’s surprising that in the past half hour since Reese broke into his apartment, this is the first time Fusco has been reminded that he answered the door in an old t-shirt and boxer shorts. Which kind of speaks to how bizarrely well this whole thing is going. He doesn’t feel vulnerable, just relaxed. He has nothing left to hide. “No,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep anyway. I was up pacing around when I heard you breaking in.”

“What kept you up?” Reese inches towards him.

He groans, leans back against the arm of the couch. “I don’t know. Thinking too hard.”

Reese crawls across the couch, closing the distance. “I don’t think you’re ever in any danger of that, Lionel,” he says as he clambers over Fusco, mouth quirked in a cunning little half-smile.

Fusco catches himself smiling back. “Keep laughing, buddy,” he mutters as Reese pushes him onto his side and slips in behind him, pressed between Fusco and the back of the couch, curled up around him, one arm thrown congenially over his side.

They’ve been in this position before, a few times, but it’s never been a thing they did openly. It’s always been obscured by sleep and feigned sleep and a deep, abiding worry that if he mentioned it, it would stop. Reese rests his head against Fusco’s neck and breathes, sends a hot puff of air against his ear that makes him go very still.

“I’m always surprised that you let me do this,” he says, like he’s listening in on Fusco’s thoughts.

“I don’t tell you to stop feeling me up when I’m asleep? Go figure.” He squirms a little when Reese’s hands begin to wander over him in an aimless, shy kind of way, touching his chest and stomach and the tops of his thighs with a ticklish lightness. It’s a gesture that seems calculated to make Fusco uncomfortable, but it comes off as revealingly hesitant.

“There is that,” Reese admits, pulling him closer, “but you’re not _always_ asleep. Sometimes you’re wide awake, and you don’t say a word.”

Fusco takes a long, shaky breath. He wonders if they’re really going where they seem to be going. He wonders why he isn’t against it. He slides one hand to rest over the back of Reese’s right hand, now idling on his hip.

“Lionel,” Reese says, voice low and thrumming against Fusco’s neck. “I want you to reconsider.”

“Hmm?”

“About relocation.”

Fusco twists his neck around, trying to catch his eye. “What? Are you kidding me?”

Reese props himself up on one elbow and leans forward to meet his gaze. His eyes are filled with that soft, gloomy vulnerability that makes them both uncomfortable. “I’m not.”

“No. I can’t cut and run now, not after all the work I’ve done. I’m too far into this. And I’m not going anywhere without my kid.”

“You can bring him with you,” Reese says, too quickly. In more measured tones, he says, “Wouldn’t be strictly legal, but then, you’ve never really cared about that.”

“Get off me,” Fusco snaps, trying to shake him off as Reese grabs at his upper arm. “I’m not going to ask you to kidnap my son from his mom. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Reese pushes him into the cushions and barely reacts when Fusco jams an elbow back into his gut, just a small ‘oof’ of displaced air. “I can’t believe you let me do this to you,” he says, rolling them over so Fusco is flat on his belly beneath him. “Don’t you know how badly I could hurt you like this? You know what I am; you know what I’m capable of; you know what I did to Stills.” He drags Fusco’s wrists above his head. “Is it that you trust me not to hurt you?” His head drops close to Fusco’s ear. Fusco smells wine, the warm salt smell of his skin. “Is that it?” Reese whispers, half-hopeful. “Do you trust me?”

Fusco struggles beneath him. He’s pinned, truly caught in this strange, intimate little position. He keeps trying to talk like it’s one of their ordinary disagreements, like he’s just being difficult. “You know, I might have, but then you went and pulled _this shit_.”

“Don’t do that, Lionel, don’t do that,” he moans. He’s pressed far too close. “You shouldn’t trust me at all. I am a very dangerous man.” He hiccups sadly.

“But I guess you can’t help it,” Reese continues. “It’s your nature. I chose you because you were loyal. But I didn’t think it through. I didn’t…” He trails off. “I own you enough that I could ask you to go on a suicide mission, and you’d do it because that’s who you are. That’s the kind of authority I have over you. And I don’t want it anymore.”

Fusco’s phone is buzzing in the other room again. In his mind, that sound has become ever more frantic. “I need to…” he begins, pushing himself up only to be forced flat to the couch again.

“Just say you’ll think about it,” Reese says, pleadingly. “Just let me end it.”

Fusco closes his eyes. He’s acutely aware of the way they’re together now, Reese draped on top of him, heat pressing through the fabric of his suit and warming Fusco’s back. Reese has one leg slipped between Fusco’s knees. He knows that if he fights, he’ll never get free, because Reese _has_ him. One hundred ways to pin him down, a thousand ways to make sure he never stands up again, and Fusco knows it.

He also knows what Reese sounds like when he’s been sort of overtaken by sincerity. He knows that Reese is brushing the pad of his thumb over the inside of Fusco’s wrist over and over and over, an affectionate little tic.

And when Fusco says to him, voice heavy and soft with forced calm, “John, get off me now,” he does. Fusco picks himself up, straightens his shirt. “You’re scaring the hell out of me,” he remarks, still incongruously casual.

Reese is leaning back on the couch, hands folded in his lap, shooting guarded looks in his direction as Fusco passes him by to get at his phone. He looks ashamed of himself.

“I’m sorry, Lionel,” he calls as the buzzing from the phone dies out just before Fusco can reach it. “I never wanted that to happen.”

“I don’t care.” Fusco picks up the phone, unlocks it.

“You just worry me,” Reese says. He’s up and standing in the doorway. His face is marred by sorrow and exhaustion, muscles loose with drink, but he’s got this inherent lethality about him, a killing machine not quite under control, and that makes Fusco back up against the counter. “You worry me so much that sometimes I follow you around the city for days at a time just to get some peace of mind.”

“Yeah,” Fusco says. His voice is weak as dry leaves and it fails. He clears his throat, and what he gets then is still tired and trembling, but at least there’s weight to it. “Like I said, guy, I don’t care. I don’t want you in my house, and I don’t want your opinion on whether I stay on with HR or not. That’s it. Just back off, alright?”

Reese steps closer, one hand cautiously outstretched, palm down, fingers extended, like he’s trying to lure out a frightened animal. “It’s all I can see when I look at you, all the ways you could be compromised and killed. I put you here. You’re my responsibility, Lionel, and whatever happens I’m going to honor that.”

Fusco breezes past the missed call notification on his phone without looking, brings up the dial pad and keys in the first two numbers. Then he holds it up for Reese to see. “I said ‘back off,’” Fusco tells him firmly, thumb hovering over the 1.

Reese stops dead in his tracks. “That’s not such a good idea, Lionel,” he says, carefully. “How will you explain this to HR?”

“I’ll think of something,” he says. “Just get out before I do something stupid, okay?”

Reese takes a deep breath, smiles at him in that very real way, the way that makes it difficult for him to speak or think sometimes. The one that goes right to his eyes. Reese says to him, “You’re a better man than I thought you’d be.”

There’s something deep within him that opens up at that, the dark and scabbed-over part of him that still grovels for any praise Reese throws his way. The part that folds to Reese every time. The part that loved getting pinned down and held. It’s like he can see everything now, why he drives Reese so crazy, why he lets Reese into his home, why, even now in this terrible, strange hour, Fusco hates to make him leave.

But he kind of drew a line in the sand about the creepy stuff. And Fusco may be loyal and a sap and so eager to hear Reese’s voice sometimes that he’ll pick fights with him on the phone just so they can keep talking. But Fusco’s also pretty stubborn.

He hits the 1 and brings the phone to his ear. He lets the operator do her thing before saying, “I’d like to report a break-in.”

Reese backs up, grin still plastered on his face, the genuine fondness draining into some sort of fatigued, forced death mask of a smile. “I’m sorry,” he says as he leaves. “I’m sorry I made you do that.”

Fusco takes the phone from his ear, covers it with his hand to muffle the sound. “I made myself do it. Now get out of here.”

After he’s gone, and Fusco’s finished mechanically feeding details to the 911 operator, barely expending the effort needed to construct an easy lie, he starts to think about what’s going to happen. He can’t call them off now; even if he tells them not to bother, they’re going to send someone over anyway, and then it will get back to HR, like Reese said. And he can explain it away. It’s not like he hasn’t done that before. But it’s attention that he doesn’t want.

He’s not sorry he did it, but a part of him thinks this might have been a stupid, drastic thing to do.

His phone comes to life in his hands again, and he answers on automatic. “Yeah?”

“Detective Fusco?” It’s Finch’s voice, reedy and urgent. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all night.”

“It’s fine,” Fusco says, rubbing at his forehead. “What is it?”

There’s an uncomfortable pause, filled with low, quiet, halting sounds, like he’s trying to explain, but can’t quite find the words. Finally, he decides on “He’s drunk.”

A laugh escapes Fusco, dry and harsh.

“He’s been overwrought lately. He’s not used to having this kind of free time on his hands, and he’s starting to slip back into…old habits. I try to keep him as occupied as I can, but there’s only so much…” Finch trails off. “I just wanted to tell you, if he comes to you, don’t engage with him.”

Fusco is still laughing. It’s got a bit of an edge to it now, a bit of the manic, a bit of the uncontrollable.

“Do you find this funny, Detective?” Finch asks him, tone stern and prim like a librarian Fusco remembers from grade school, which makes him laugh a little bit harder.

“No,” he says, between deep, gulping breaths. “He just left. You’re too late. It’s not funny, but you just missed him. You’re too late.” His next breath is long and slow, a sober hiss of air.

“Oh,” Finch says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Fusco says, wiping at his eyes. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I promise, that is the absolute creepiest this relationship will get. Sorry about that.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s a few weeks after the incident and things are still bad, which is the best he could have hoped for, under the circumstances. Things could be much worse, after all. They do see each other on rare, sober occasions, but it’s cold and painful and nobody knows what to say. They stick to the basics: who needs what from whom by when. Reese doesn’t come up to Fusco’s apartment and Fusco doesn’t ask him to. They don’t fight; they don’t joke; they don’t flirt. Reese maintains a respectful distance of about four feet at all times, and it’s not getting any smaller.

 _This_ , Fusco thinks, _can only be a good thing_. But he feels like he’s losing out, all the same. More and more often, he catches himself wanting to close the gap between them.

He doesn’t get that itch anymore, that feeling like he’s being watched. But it doesn’t mean anything. One thing he’s figured out since this awkwardness began is that he isn’t really that good at knowing when he’s being tailed. Reese just _wanted_ him to know.

He wanted him to feel safe.

He thinks maybe they both need help.

***

Fusco doesn’t want to do this hands-on kind of work again, but he’s got an understanding that this is just how it has to be. Someone has to get close to HR. If that means sitting idly by, letting something awful happen on the other side of the door he’s guarding so that one day it’ll never have to happen again, well, he can do that. He doesn’t have to like it.

A savage crack of bone on metal and an agonized wail slips through the locked door and echoes off the walls and ceiling of the warehouse, and Fusco flinches and clenches his hands on his knees.

The plainclothes detective sitting in the metal folding chair across from him grins. “Delicate constitution?” he asks. “Come on, guy, I heard you’d been doing this since the Bush administration.”

The detective’s name is Novak. Fusco doesn’t really know Novak that well, outside of the fact that he works Vice, he’s in HR, and he’s not even trying to hide it. That’s got to be a five hundred dollar watch peeking out of Novak’s cuff. The suit’s more subtle, but it makes him look more like a hitman than most of the hitmen Fusco knows. And Fusco knows a few.

Fusco’s inclined to go on not knowing Novak, because if Fusco was in the habit of making snap judgments  about people based on a very brief acquaintance (and he is), he’d say that Novak’s a skinny, vicious, mean little fucker who wouldn’t know loyalty if it popped him in the kneecap. Even when he was still on the take for real, he wouldn’t have wanted a guy like Novak anywhere near him. Guys like him make bad situations worse.

But Fusco _has_ been doing this since the Bush administration, and he knows what he’s doing, and he knows that he needs to be friends with Novak. Fusco has been infiltrating this organization on years and years’ worth of loyalty and good faith. He’s a lousy liar and he’s never been able to completely stop whatever he’s thinking from showing on his face plain as day. But he’s got his reputation.

He’s Stills’ ex-partner.

Simmons’s friend.

He’s the most loyal son of a bitch you’ve ever met.

He’d _never_ snitch.

The guys in HR who know Fusco, the ones who are his friends, or friends of friends; they know this. Novak doesn’t. Fusco barely knows the guys who are behind the door, making some poor son of a bitch scream and cry. Fusco’s only here because Simmons wanted someone he can trust looking in on this, which means all Fusco’s got to protect him right now is the secondhand word that Simmons thinks he’s OK. This is not enough protection for Fusco’s tastes. This makes him nervous. This makes him vulnerable.

Novak is watching him expectantly. Fusco has to answer.

“Never really got used to it,” he says, allowing a small smile. “The noises, you know? It always sounds worse than it looks.”

Novak shrugs. “I don’t get that. Never bothered me, not any of it.”

_Of course it doesn’t bother you. Why would it? It’s not your face getting pounded in._

His smile holds steady. He’s getting better at this. “Some people are just made for it, I guess.”

Not for the first time, Fusco misses Stills. Sure, on the rare occasions when he’s completely honest with himself, Fusco can admit that Stills was a monster of sorts. That, like Novak, seeing people hurt never bothered him. Maybe it even got him off a little, hearing people beg for their lives. Fusco knows that’s a lousy thing to think about a dead friend, but he only thinks it because it’s probably true.

Yeah, Stills was a monster.

But at least he had the decency to keep it under wraps. At least he tried to look legitimate. At least he stood by Fusco, trusted him every time, because Stills may have been a sadist but he knew what devotion was. At least Stills was good to his wife and kids, the gawky teenager and the blonde five-year-old girl.

(Fusco and a few other guys still stick a little money in an envelope every month and drop it at the Stills residence, unmarked. The other guys do it because it’s the right thing; Fusco does it because it’s the only way he knows how to say, “I’m sorry I buried your dad.”)

Stills at least understood that there were laws you didn’t break. Friendship. Family. Partnerships. He got it like these thugs with skinned knuckles never will. Like the guy in the suit never will.

That’s not fair to think. He can’t know anything about the guy in the suit, not really. He tries and tries, and sometimes he thinks he does; he sees it all in black and white, but then he thinks, _That can’t be it_. Because it can’t be. Anyway, Reese barely comes to him for information anymore; Fusco hasn’t seen him once in the past month or so. He guesses that whatever the two of them had, it’s done with. So he’s given up on understanding the guy in the suit.

When he feels himself starting to miss Reese, he tries missing Stills instead. It’s not perfect, but it helps.

There’s a sort of satisfying _thwock_ from behind the door, and then silence. “What’d that guy do, anyway?” he asks Novak, by way of conversation.

Novak rolls his shoulders, lets the bones crack and pop. “Blackmail. Tried to shake one of our guys down.” He’s smirking a little at some private joke that Fusco isn’t interested in hearing because it’ll probably just make him want to hurt Novak even more.

“Oh,” Fusco says. “Well. That’s fair.”

“I thought so,” Novak agrees cheerfully.

The door swings wide with a groan, and the two other guys emerge, ruddy with exertion and shaking out sore knuckles. They’re called Brody and Mason. Where Novak’s this small-boned, compact guy, these two are basically gorillas. Broad shoulders, big arms, a hell of a lot taller than Fusco, like that’s an accomplishment. They’re both beat cops. In uniform, they’re probably pretty intimidating. In street clothes, they look like your good old ordinary meatheads. Add about a pint of blood splashed on their hands and arms and shirtfronts and faces, and they cycle straight back around to terrifying.

“So how’d it go?” Novak asks, completely unfazed.

“Not too bad,” Mason tells him. “He’s keeping the negatives in a safety deposit box. Dumbass kept the key on him and we beat the number out of him. No problem.”

“Nice,” Novak says. There’s a friendly pause there where they all nod a little and silently congratulate themselves on a job well done. Fusco just plays along.

He opens his coat, indicates the gun strapped to his side, just against his ribs. “You want me to…?” he begins, jerking his head towards the open door, the prone man bent facedown over the table.

Brody follows his gaze. “Oh, no thanks,” he says. “That guy’s done. Thanks for offering, though.” He smiles a little. Brody’s got a face like a kid.

Fusco lets his coat fall shut and tries not to look relieved. Reese told him once that if he ever hurt another innocent person, Reese would kill him. Fusco believes that and he’s glad of it, because it strengthens his own desire to never drive a stranger to their quiet, unjust death again. But because conscientiously objecting marks him as the odd man out in HR, he has to offer up something. This is his one thing: a quick, painless end for those who are already doomed. Still, he’s happy to not have to do it.

Mason is fishing something out of his jacket pocket, a large brown envelope, thick with contents and covered in bloody thumbprints. He holds it up and waves it at Novak, then tosses it to him like a Frisbee. Novak catches it neatly and thumbs it open. “Oh, yeah,” he says, smile creeping across his face. “This is it. Good job, guys.”

“What is it?” Fusco asks, surreptitiously leaning over to catch a glimpse, but it turns out he doesn’t have to sneak because Novak just hands it to him. It’s a stack of photographs, glossy hard copies. Each picture is furtive, snapped in secrecy, from behind obstacles or over great distances. He recognizes some of the people in the photos as cops, guys he knows are in HR. Picture after picture of these guys palling around with known drug dealers, taking dinner with mobsters. Fusco’s trying to remember them all so he can tell Reese if Reese ever decides to talk to him again, but there’s just too many.

“Fella in the room back there is an investigative journalist,” Novak tells him as Fusco flips through the stack. “Started following anyone with a connection to HR, taking pictures. They’re pretty good, actually. If he’d just published his story, he’d have done us some serious damage. Good news for us, he’s an idiot trying to turn a profit. He sent us some samples, a sum, and a meeting place, and…well, we met.”

Fusco flips a photo of a respected police captain and a working girl in what someone more polite than Fusco would call a “compromising position” to the back of the pile, and the one underneath makes his mouth go dry and his heart sink to somewhere around his knees.

He sees his car, parked in the gravely shadow of the underpass. He sees himself pressed back against the car door, Reese pinning him there, the camera catching this perfect profile of the two of them nose to nose, staring each other down, and Fusco can remember the exact moment, the exact context and his mind scrambles and all he can think is, “Oh, God, it’s not what it looks like.”

Novak peers over, taps his index finger against the photo. “Yeah, I thought that one was interesting too,” he says. He’s smiling that private joke smile again, and this time Fusco thinks he knows the punchline. “He actually sent us that one as a sample. I guess he recognized the other guy. He should; we’ve been tearing apart the city looking for him. So he thought, ‘A cop and that guy who shoots out kneecaps, all jungled up together under a bridge? Gotta be worth something.’ And he was right!” Novak’s disinterested veneer is lit through with something sharper, brighter, more insidious. “’Course, he didn’t know that HR’s looking for that guy just as much as the straight cops. Maybe more.” Novak cocks his head to one side. “So, Fusco, you want to explain this picture?”

He’ll come up with something. He has to come up with something. But he keeps sitting there, with what he knows is a stupid, horrified look on his face, but his brain keeps spinning its wheels in the mud, and he can’t make himself say a word. Out of the corners of his eyes, he can see that Mason and Brody have moved much, much closer.

Fusco exhales slowly, and accepts that he’s just not very good at coming up with lies.

The blow to the back of his head is almost welcome.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers, let it be known that there is all kinds of violence in this chapter. Torture, really. So, be forewarned.
> 
> Also, the more astute among you may have noticed that I upped the rating. The reason for this is twofold. First, I thought the level of violence in this chapter earned a slightly higher rating. Secondly, I've started work on the last chapter. And I won't lie to you folks, it's got dicks in it. I was forced to either up the rating, or cut the dicks. And far be it from me to cut an innocent dick.

Fusco wakes up with his forehead resting on a metal table. There’s a sharp pain in the back of his head, and warm wetness dribbling down the back of his neck, which, for a wild second, he thinks might be his brains. He soon realizes that no, probably not, actually kind of stupid of him, but it’s a terrifying moment all the same. Then he tries to lift his head and hears Novak say, “Oh, hey, he’s coming around.”

He manages to look across the table and see Novak bent opposite, peering at him. To one side, he can see Brody and Mason, waiting. Beyond Novak’s inquisitive face, there’s a closed door.

Fusco knows where he is. He clenches his hands into fists, looks down and to the left, and sees the journalist. He’s lying there like they just toppled him out of the seat when they pushed Fusco into it. The journalist is bleeding on the floor, still quietly eking out the last drops. Fusco wishes they’d laid him out, at least wrapped him in the plastic he’s to be transported in. It’s just good sense, and then what’s left of his face would be harder to see.

“Hey!” Novak snaps his fingers about an inch away from Fusco’s face and it makes him jump. “Come on, we’re trying to talk to you. Keep it together.”

Fusco blinks at him, manages to sit up and is nearly laid low by the throbbing in his head, like his brains are too big for his skull. “I’ll do my best,” he says.

Novak reaches out and puts his palm flat on Fusco’s head. Fusco jerks away, tries to push Novak’s hand off, and that’s how he finds out that his hands are cuffed behind his back. Novak smiles at him, winds his fingers through Fusco’s sparse, tight curls and pulls down hard, slamming Fusco’s forehead against the metal table.

It’s like an explosion of pain goes off behind his eyes and he’s left dazed and unsteady. He tries to focus on Novak’s finger as it wags in front of him and Novak tells him, “Don’t get smart.” Fusco tries to take a bite of his finger when it gets too close, but Novak slaps him back down again and Fusco just pillows his head on the nice cool table and waits.

“What can you tell us about the guy in the suit?” Novak asks.

Ah. Well. That’s the question. After a bit of effort, Fusco’s sitting up again, though he has to lean hard against the back of the chair and his head is always in danger of just flopping over backwards, leaving his throat exposed. “Nothing,” Fusco says. “I don’t know where he lives, or what he does, or why he does it. I don’t know what he wants me to do. I don’t know what his real name is. We can stay here for days, and you can hit me as much as you want, and I still won’t be able to tell you anything, no matter how much I want to, because I don’t know anything about him.”

Novak holds up the picture. “Looks to me like you know him pretty well.”

Fusco squints hard at the picture. “I know he’s handsy,” he says finally.

Brody steps forward with a sigh, punches him in the mouth so hard he feels the need to count his teeth afterwards, dragging his tongue along each molar before he realizes that he just cut the inside of his mouth. He sits up again, spits blood on the table.

Novak isn’t even looking at him anymore, just pacing. “But Fusco, we know that you know this guy pretty well, ‘cause he’s been to your house. Yeah,” he says, in response to Fusco’s widened eyes. “Yeah, we know about that. Kind of had to piece it together, like we’re real detectives or some shit. ‘Cause we knew about the picture, but we didn’t know it was him for sure, ‘cause all the pictures the feds gave us are terrible. But we got a piece of luck when you had that break-in of yours a little over a month ago; remember that? Two responding officers, plus a rotating shift of officers who watched the place for a couple of days afterwards. No less than three individual sightings. Is this guy slipping or what? So,” Novak says, winding down, “what was he doing there?”

Fusco decides to tell the truth because it’s absurd enough that it almost doesn’t matter. “I feed him,” he says.

“ _What?_ ”

“Like a stray cat. He breaks into my house, I make him dinner, he gets me drunk and tries to feel me up on the couch. I’m not being smart,” he says, as Mason steps forward to save Brody the trouble of striking him again. “That’s really what he does.”

His head hits the tabletop at speed again, and Fusco looks up again to find that he’s gone completely blind. An icy shudder runs through his whole body before he blinks a few times and oh, good, he just has blood in his eyes. That’s better than the other thing.

So he’s looking up at Novak, opening and closing his eyes just to get the blood out, and Novak catches his head before it can drop to the table again, cupping Fusco’s chin. “Look,” Novak begins, “You’re screwed either way. No matter what happens, you’re not walking out of here. Just tell us what you know, and I swear I’ll make it quick. Gunshot to the back of the head; you won’t feel a thing. Even make up a nice, pretty story for your family’s benefit, if you’ve got one.”

Fusco groans, tries to shake his head out of Novak’s hand, but Novak grips tight, forces him to look up.

“But, Fusco, you keep being difficult like this…well, we got all day, man. You’re not gonna die with dignity, I’ll tell you that right now.”

He just closes his eyes, exhales through his nose. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“I don’t have a thing I want to tell you,” Fusco says, eyes still shut. “So, okay. Do what you need to do. I won’t complain.”

Novak laughs, thin and disbelieving. “Your funeral, man,” he says, letting go of Fusco’s chin. “You really think you’ll be able to keep quiet?”

Fusco lets his head rest on the table. “I don’t know.” He’s just trying to keep his voice steady for as long as he can. He thinks he has about a minute left to not regret this decision. “I’ll do my best.”

Novak shrugs out of his suit jacket, Mason and Brody crack their knuckles. Fusco doesn’t know how to get ready for this. He doesn’t know how to brace himself for a painful death. Although he supposes that in small ways, he’s been bracing himself for a while. Ever since he met Reese, he’s been waiting for the day this job would kill him, when he’d die alone and in pain in the darkest place on earth. He’s glad he thought to set up a life insurance policy. He hopes that his body turns up somewhere and someone can identify it, because he doesn’t want his ex or his son thinking he ran out on them. He wants Reese to know what happened to him.

This isn’t helping.

“Don’t hit his mouth so much,” Novak is saying to the others. “We need him to be able to talk. Can’t do that so well with a broken jaw.”

 _That’s sound advice_ , Fusco thinks. _I had this Novak guy all wrong. He’s going places._

Mason steps forward, looking him over like he can’t quite decide what to hit first. Fusco balls his hands up behind his back, curls his toes into the bottom of his shoes like he’s trying to find purchase on the concrete floor. He lets his eyes fall closed, decides not to bother opening them again. He’s ready. He thought he’d never be, but he’s ready.

There’s a knock on the door, and it’s almost a disappointment.

“The fuck?” he hears Novak murmur under his breath.

There’s another knock, short and precise and unfailingly polite, but still urgent.

“I thought this place was abandoned,” Brody whispers.

“It is!” Novak hisses in response. “Nobody knows you guys are here, right?”

Two faintly mystified “No”s.

The knock is back again, now rapid and more pounding. It’s making Fusco’s head hurt. He’s just trying not to get his hopes up, thinking over and over “They’re not here for you; they’re not here for you; they’re not here for you,” because if he lets himself think it and he’s wrong, he’s going to embarrass himself.

Novak decides to bite the bullet. “Yeah?” he calls.

A voice outside calls, “This is Detective Stills,” and for an insane moment, Fusco completely believes it.

Then he figures it out.

Then he thinks, “ _They_ won’t believe it.”

Then he remembers, “No one knows he’s dead.”

He hears the bulk of Brody move towards the door, and Fusco gives up and opens his eyes. Brody’s standing in the way, with the door open a crack. “What do you want?” Brody asks.

The voice outside says, “You have my guy.”

The heavy door slams once, twice on Brody’s head, and Fusco isn’t sure how much damage was done right there, but the gap between the door and the frame is bright with blood after Brody slides to the floor, so he guesses a lot. Then the door swings wide and Reese is in.

He’s got his gun out and he’s moving fast, eyes narrowed, jaw tense, but it’s a tiny room, barely more than a closet, so Mason manages to rush right up to him, to that point of closeness when having a gun is almost a hindrance because anything could happen, that close. Mason grabs Reese’s gun hand, tries to wrench it away from him, but Reese’s arm draws back and strikes his nose with the heel of his hand, and from there Reese just wrests his gun free and blows a hole in Mason’s shoulder.

Fusco’s got his cheek resting on the table, head turned to one side so that the blood runs off and doesn’t get in the way, because if he’s honest with himself, even back when he hated the guy he loved to watch Reese fight.

Now it’s just Novak and Reese, and Novak’s kind of stunned, hasn’t even reached for his gun. He’s just standing there, hands at his sides, eyes round and befuddled. Reese asks “Are you in charge here?”

Novak remembers where he is and goes for his gun, but Reese lunges, does something so fast Fusco can’t really process it, and soon Novak is sporting a bloody nose and his gun is in Reese’s hand.

“You in charge here?” he asks again.

Novak tries to answer with a dry mouth, swallows hard, rasps. Finally he just nods.

“Good,” says Reese. “I’m going to have to talk to you later.” Almost casually, he shoots out one of Novak’s knees and Novak collapses to the floor with a shout.

Reese rolls his shoulders, seems to drink in the quiet. The warehouse full of screams is now silent except for the pained gasps of Novak in the corner. Reese looks first to the body of the journalist, crouches down and slips two fingers against the man’s throat and waits for the obvious. He sighs, puts a finger to his ear, says, “Finch, he’s already dead.” Then, for the first time in months and months, Reese looks directly at Fusco.

The “oh” seems to rip itself out of Reese, just a soft, pained little noise in the moment when their eyes meet, and then Reese is on him. Reese is on his knees in front of the chair, and he’s got his arm around Fusco’s middle, and he’s got his hand cradling his face, and he’s kissing Fusco so hard that they’re both tasting blood.

Fusco tries being surprised but, honestly, he’s too tired and hurt to bother at this point, so all he can think is, _Huh, I guess it_ can _be that_ , and leans as far into the kiss as his handcuffs will allow.

It’s a long kiss, goes on far too long, gradually calming from a savage, bruising meeting of flesh and teeth to soft, needy pushes. Fusco lets it all happen, even the parts that hurt, because he’s so happy to be alive and to be seeing Reese, and he feels this mean little thrill in his chest every time Reese bites him. If he listens hard enough, he can hear faint chatter from Reese’s earpiece, Finch’s elevated voice, and that almost starts him laughing.

All at once Reese pulls back, looking as if nothing happened aside from his swollen, bitten lips, but he’s still got his hand on Fusco’s face, and Fusco’s still pressing into it.

“What kept you?” Fusco asks.

Reese’s face stays blank and serious as he wipes the blood out of Fusco’s eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “Don’t,” he says. “What did you tell them?”

That’s probably a valid question, given the circumstances, but at this point in their relationship, Fusco can’t help but feel insulted. “Nothing they didn’t already know.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a goddamn thing.”

Reese licks the pad of his thumb and gently wipes drops of gumming blood off of Fusco’s eyelashes. “That’s good, Lionel,” he murmurs. “You’re very good.” He clears his throat. “Where are the keys?”

Fusco shrugs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t awake for that part.”

Reese stands up with a sigh. “I’ll figure it out. Try to pull yourself together,” he says, squeezing at Fusco’s shoulder.

“Pull myself together?” Fusco spits, struggling to look over his shoulder as Reese walks past him. “You’re the one who jumped me.”

Reese ignores him, starts fishing through Novak’s pockets. Novak cries out in protest, tries to aim a kick at Reese, and Reese rather smoothly decks him so Novak’s head bounces off the concrete floor. It’s here that Fusco notices that Reese has become the man in the suit through and through. His movements are lethally efficient, well-oiled and mechanical. This guy never took a nap on Fusco’s couch.  After a few seconds, he comes up with the keys.

Later, as Reese fiddles with the lock on the cuffs, Fusco asks him, “How’d you find me?” and tries not to sound too grateful, even though he is.

“Tracked your phone,” Reese tells him.

“Of course you can.”

“Of course we can,” Reese pleasantly agrees. “But I wasn’t here for you. I came for Mr. Trostle.”

“Who?”

“The corpse, Lionel.” The cuffs spring open with a click and Fusco can’t pull his hands free fast enough. He takes stock of the raw, chafed flesh, tries to massage some life back into his wrists. “He’s one of our little projects. I found out that he’d made an enemy of HR, and that you were part of the group sent out to meet him. Obviously, I was too late.”

For the first time since he noticed it, Fusco hazards a look at the body. The journalist’s corpse is scrawny and limp. The broken jaw is rough with stubble. With the danger passed, it looks less like a threat and more like a sad, used-up thing. “I’m sorry I didn’t do anything,” Fusco says. He really is. He tries to stand and the world shifts wildly. Reese lunges forward and catches hold of his forearms, drags him upright.

“Can you drive right now?” Reese asks.

“Are you kidding?” Fusco tries to fight his way out of Reese’s grasp out of spite, just because it’s what he’s used to. “I can barely stand.” He nearly gets free, stumbles and Reese catches him, lowers him back into the chair, grabs his shoulders.

“Sit,” Reese orders, pressing down on him like it’ll make him stick there.

Fusco feels his shoulders crack and pop, Reese’s fingertips probing into clenched muscle. It aches something fierce but that’s kind of how he wants to be handled right now, rough and possessive. He finds himself wishing Reese would bruise him. When Reese lets go, Fusco doesn’t try to stand.

From there, he’s methodical. He moves from man to man, divesting them of weapons, phones, anything useful before taking out zip ties from his pockets and binding each of their wrists behind their backs, even Mason, who Fusco’s pretty sure is dead. Reese finds the envelope of pictures in Novak’s pocket, starts flipping through. “Finch,” Reese says to the room at large, “I found the pictures.” He separates out one, raises his eyebrows, shuffles it back into the pile. Fusco bets it’s the one with the hooker. “These are pretty comprehensive. Why don’t you ever bring me anything like this, Lionel?”

Fusco doesn’t want to answer that one, so he just spits a gob of blood on the floor, and that seems to suffice.

Reese slips the envelope into his own coat pocket, goes to collect the lone photograph on the table. That stops him short. “Is this what got you into trouble?” Reese asks.

Fusco nods. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Reese picks it up, gives it a long look. An odd quirk, equal parts cruel and affectionate, forms at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t even know he was there,” Reese says.

“They caught sight of you leaving my apartment that night, too. Are you getting worse at this or what?”

“In fairness, Lionel, you were incredibly distracting that day.”

“There’s nothing fair about it. You almost got me killed.”

“Debatably.” Reese folds the picture in half and slips it into an inside pocket, separate from the other pictures. He goes to Fusco and holds out his hand.

Fusco accepts it grudging, allows himself to be pulled to his feet. He’s still unsteady, but it’s better now. “I will debate you all fucking day about that.”

“Sounds like fun,” Reese says, neatly slinging Fusco’s arm around his shoulder, his own arm around Fusco’s waist. “But we don’t have time. You need to see a doctor.”

“What do I say happened to me?” he asks, pointing to his head wound.

Reese says, “Don’t say anything. I’ll tell you how it happened later.”

“Oh,” he says as they start to walk out of the room, slowly, stumbling. “What about them?”

“I’ll take care of it. Put them out of your mind.” Reese kicks the door shut behind them, keeps him walking across the warehouse floor. There’s daylight eking through the dingy windows near the ceiling, and it’s astonishing to Fusco. “It’s only about three in the afternoon,” Reese supplies, following his gaze.

“I thought it was later.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asks.

“I can’t say right now,” Reese says, carefully focused on the windows, not on Fusco. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m going to drop you at the hospital. After you’re released, go home and wait for me.”

Fusco refuses to take another step. “So do I not get a say in this?”

“No, you don’t.” Reese tries to drag him along behind him.

 Fusco digs his heels in, pulls back. “It’s my life we’re talking about, here. Maybe you don’t give a damn, but-”

Reese wheels on him, nearly lets Fusco drop. “I just _saved_ your life,” he snaps in this low, snarling tone that makes Fusco shiver every time. “And I’m going to go on saving your life as much as I have to. I don’t particularly care if you like the way I do it. Now walk with me, Lionel, or I swear I will carry you.”

Fusco lets himself be walked out of the warehouse, into the blinding afternoon sunlight, over to his car, where Reese props him up against the door and spits, “Keys.” Fusco digs them out of his suit pocket, surprised they’re still there, squeezes them sharp into his palm to try and call himself back to reality. Reese snatches them from him, puts him in the passenger seat, tries to buckle his goddamn seatbelt for him, but Fusco tells him to fuck off. He does, shuts the door and moves around the car to the driver’s side. It takes Fusco two tries, because his motor control is all to shit right now, but he manages to get it buckled before Reese opens the driver’s side door and climbs in, which is a small mercy.

Reese starts up the engine, turns off the radio when Fusco cringes at the sudden burst of sound. They drive in silence, Reese staring dead ahead, Fusco transfixed by the window. He can’t really take anything in right now; it’s all just a bright, colorful, lively blur. He starts shaking uncontrollably, just shuddering and pressing his bleeding head against the window to stop it, find some steadiness, but there’s none to be found. He gasps when Reese’s hand curves over his thigh and rests there, moving only faintly, a reassuring little touch. “Shh,” Reese says. “Stay calm.”

Fusco watches a little trickle of his blood ooze its way down the glass. “I am calm.”


	7. Chapter 7

He winds up spending 24 hours under observation, which is 24 hours longer than he would have liked to be trapped in the hospital. His symptoms begin to fade after only five, and by the time he gets home, the sun has gone down and the throbbing in his skull has faded to a dull, tender ache. He’s got a head full of stitches and he's taking meds for the pain. It’s under control.

Reese wasn’t waiting for Fusco when he got released. That’s acceptable, he supposes. After all, his instructions were to wait for Reese at home. But still, it’s been a whole day. You’d think he could spare a minute to bring Fusco’s car back. But maybe it’s for the best that he didn’t. Fusco's in no state to drive. He keeps getting distracted by things, the slant of light through a window, the faces of passersby. He can't believe it's all still here, that he's still here to see it. Every so often, he’s almost laid low by the knowledge that he might get to see his son again.

Then again, he might not, Fusco thinks sadly. He has a suspicion about what happens next.

To that end, he packs a suitcase. Just a few sets of clothes, enough to tide him over for a week or so. His razor, his reading glasses, his gun. A photo of his son. In the inside pocket of the case, he tucks the wedding band that he never wears. He thought he'd have more he'd want to bring when his whole life got yanked up by the roots, but now he just can't think of anything else he needs. His toothbrush, he guesses, but he's going to need that if he ends up staying the night, so it's just sitting in limbo on the bathroom sink. He puts his suitcase in the front room, by the door, ready to go.

It’s not that he wants to leave. As fucked up as his life has become, he’s never even thought about running away. But all HR is probably gunning for him now, and he’d rather not be killed for nothing. Even if he did try to stay, he doesn’t know that Reese will take no for an answer this time. He doesn’t know how long his apartment will be a safe place to wait.

He wishes Reese would get here already.

He spends about twenty minutes watching the door, debating with himself about whether or not to try and have a shower before Reese comes over. He's not supposed to get his stitches wet just yet, but he can smell the blood in his hair and it's driving him crazy. Reese will probably want to get going quickly. He should stay in the front room, alert and ready. Fusco starts up the coffee maker, sits nearby tapping his fingers on the counter as the percolator bubbles cheerfully.

There's a layer of grit on his skin that he wants off now or he feels like he's going to start clawing at himself.

He kills about forty-five minutes in the shower, letting warm water pound over his shoulders and back, relaxing muscles he didn't know he was still clenching tense. He watches as weak pink traces swirl in the drain, and he lets the water go until long after it runs cold. The water pours over him again and again until his flesh pimples, ashen with the chill. He feels scarred, unfinished. The shakes return, deeper than cold, and he braces his palms against the tile and just rides them out.

He’s huddled against the shower wall, dripping, and he thinks, “He _kissed_ me.” It’s something that keeps occurring to him throughout the day. It’s not a thought he can hold in his head for longer than a few minutes at a time.

When he finally forces himself to get out, he dresses warm and dark and simple. T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, jacket. Comfortably anonymous. His mediocre suits that always mark him as a cop stay in the closet, probably to remain there until he’s been disappeared long enough that the landlord can clear the apartment out and rent it to someone else. Those, he won’t miss.

It’s past one in the morning, and Fusco is starting to worry. Reese hasn’t shown up. Reese hasn’t even called him just to say he’s alive. At this point, Fusco would be happy if he looked out the window and saw his car spinning its wheels against a spurting fire hydrant, driver’s side door hanging lazily open, because at least then he’d know that Reese wasn’t dead.

He takes a scalding gulp of coffee, confident in the knowledge that he won’t be able to taste anything for a few days.

 Fusco’s wondering if maybe he should call Finch and ask what’s up, but then he remembers the last time he called Finch behind Reese’s back, how much that pissed him off. Then he thinks, even if Reese did save his life, he deserves to get pissed off from time to time. He’s just about to make the call when there’s an urgent knock at the door. A series of polite but insistent taps.

Fusco gets up warily, crosses to the door, puts his eye to the peephole.

Reese’s face is shadowed with bruises, brightened with red-purple vibrant scrapes. Maybe it’s nerves or an overabundance of energy, but he’s pacing in front of the door, movements liquid, body alive with power. He’s wearing the marks of a beating like it’s war paint. His eyes flick to the peephole, vivid and anxious.

It’s strange; Fusco’s been waiting for him for hours, painfully eager, but now that he’s here, Fusco just wants to make him wait. It must be this, the peephole, the rare chance to watch Reese unobserved. It’s unfair, how well he wears being beaten and alone. Especially since Fusco has this suspicion that over the course of their acquaintance, he’s embarrassed himself plenty when he thought he was alone. Fusco’s kind of been avoiding mirrors since he got home, but he’s willing to bet that he doesn’t look half so pretty beat to shit.

The anxiousness in Reese’s eyes is spreading to the corners of his mouth, to the edges of his movements. He knocks again, harder this time, shaking the door a little on its hinges. Fusco has this idea that he won’t open the door; he’ll just hang around and watch as Reese becomes more frantic, as his composure cracks, until he just fucking snaps. Then Reese pounds on the door again and calls out, “Lionel!” in a voice so hoarse and desperate that Fusco can’t help but fumble for the deadbolt.

When he swings the door wide, Reese’s game face is back on. He’s placid, unconcerned. A moment ago, he looked as though he might break down the door, but now he’s withdrawn, standing just outside the threshold, like stepping through might burn him. Reese’s mouth draws itself into a slow smirk. “You’re looking well.”

“You’re no oil painting yourself. What the hell happened to your face?”

He shrugs, unruffled. “I had some business to take care of. Had to play hardball.” The smirk sharpens momentarily, becomes wicked. “We have things to discuss. May I come in?”

Fusco stands aside, notes Reese’s momentary hesitation before passing through the door. He knows they’re both thinking about what happened the last time they were here together. He wishes he was smarter, more apprehensive. He remembers Reese begging him not to be so trusting. As he locks the door in the wake of Reese’s passage, he lets go of those thoughts.

Still, it’s not really a surprise when Reese turns on him and pushes his back against the door once it closes. Not violently, not like usual. It’s more like Reese gathers him there, holds him together. After the initial positioning, Reese doesn’t even grab at him, just places a hand against the wall on either side of Fusco’s shoulders, lets his body keep him there. “What did they say at the hospital?” he asks, conversational.

“Concussion,” he replies, following Reese’s lead. _Let’s pretend that this is normal._ “I’m supposed to ice it, pop a couple of pills every 8 hours, that kind of thing. It’s going to be fine.”

“No lasting damage?”

“They want me to check in a week from now, to be safe, but that’s what it looks like.”

“Good.” Reese’s hand leaves the door, moves to brush Fusco’s face, halts in midair, hovering uncertainly. “Do you mind if I…?”

“Go ahead,” he says. He wants to know where this is going.

Reese’s touch is light, running along the seam of the stitches on Fusco’s forehead, the tips of his fingers never pressing, pinching, or snagging. He’s just tracing the path, taking stock of every injury. “Oh, Lionel,” he breathes, “they really did a number on you, didn’t they?”

Fusco hazards a smile. “You should see the other guys.”

Reese smiles back at him, leans close. “I have seen them. You came off better.”

“What’d you do to them?” It’s a stupid question. Reese’s hand is on his face. He can see the scrapes on his knuckles.

“It’s better if you don’t know,” Reese says. He strokes the side of Fusco’s face with two fingers, careful and direct, turning his head to get a better look at a purple bruise along his jawline. “Just be happy they’re not your problem anymore.”

 Fusco swallows hard. “So, what happens now?”

“Now? You take a break. Heal up a little. You should call Simmons soon. Tell him that they turned on you at the warehouse, and when you woke up, the reporter was dead and the pictures were gone. That’s almost true.” Reese tilts his head. “Alright? You seem concerned.”

“No! No, I’m just surprised. I kind of thought you’d make me leave the country or something.” A tentative bubble of hope rises in his chest. “Doesn’t Simmons know? Don’t they all know I work for you?”

“They don’t.” Reese leans on him, settles in to tell a story, and Fusco wonders if he shouldn’t offer Reese a seat, but he knows he’d miss that warm pressure, the all-encompassing touch. “Hardly anyone knew.” He slips one hand inside Fusco’s jacket, plucks at the hem of his shirt but goes no further. “They didn’t want to spread that information around until after you were dead. According to Detective Novak, if they made that picture common knowledge, there would have been a debate about what to do with you.”

“What? Why?”

Reese says this against his ear, lips just brushing the skin. “They tell me you’re well-liked.”

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I guess so.”

“I guess so,” Reese repeats. “I guess most of HR thinks you’re a stand-up guy. And Novak guessed that even if that picture surfaced, there are some who would give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s not exactly clear-cut, that picture. You could be manipulating me. I could be threatening you.”

“You _were_ threatening me.”

“Threatening you with what, Lionel? Safety?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” he grumbles, trying to ignore the hot breath on his ear, the hand still pressed against his ribs, fingers feeling him out, prodding for bruises.

Reese returns to his explanation. “The responders didn’t even know that you and I were working together; they just spotted me near your apartment. They were lead to believe that I was targeting you.”

“You _were_ targeting me.”

He presses on. “There were six of HR’s men, in total, who knew about the photo and the order to have you killed. That includes the three that were sent to deal with you. Leaving three for me to find. Finch was…reluctant to help, but eventually, I tracked them all down. It’s just you, me, and Finch that know. And it will stay that way.” Reese pulls back, stares at him thoughtfully. “I suppose, in retrospect, it would have been easier to simply relocate you. It would have been my first instinct. But then I’d have to find myself a new corrupt cop, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. I lucked into you. And besides, I thought you made it clear that you didn’t want to go.” He casts a sidelong glance at the suitcase, sitting expectantly beside them. “Did you have a change of heart, Lionel?”

“I didn’t want to die,” he admits. “And I thought that even if I tried to stay, you’d force me.”

Reese nods, still looking at the suitcase. “That was the plan,” he says. He picks up the suitcase, turns around and walks into the living room, sets it on the coffee table, sits down.

“But you didn’t go through with it.” Fusco is still propped against the door, now forgotten.

“No,” Reese says, popping the suitcase open. “No, I didn’t.” He stares intently at the contents, begins to rummage.

“What are you doing?”

Reese looks up, a shirt wound loosely in his fingers. “I want to see what you thought was worth bringing.”

Fusco approaches slowly as Reese dissects his suitcase, yanks out the innards. He lays the necessaries in a row off to one side: the razor, the glasses, the gun. He takes greater interest in the clothes, folds and unfolds them, lets their worn and woven textures run through hands. He digs the wedding ring out of an inside pocket, spins it on the coffee table until speed transforms it into a faint golden smudge shimmering on the pitted, chipped wood. It’s a good spin. It takes a long time for the ring to return, rattling, to stillness.

Reese barely touches the picture of Michael. He sets it reverently down in the bottom of the now mostly-empty suitcase and looks away, as if ashamed of having seen it.

“It’s not much,” he says, finally.

Fusco shrugs and says, “I didn’t know what I was packing for.” He thinks for a moment. “Where would you have sent me? Or can’t you say?”

“I can’t say.” Reese pauses. “My place.”

They take a very long silence together, the first since Reese came in. For once, Fusco thinks it isn’t because they don’t know what to say to each other. He thinks they both know exactly what to say, and their pride or their fear won’t let them. Fusco does have his pride, even if it is only a meager, crippled thing that’s been dragged through the dirt too many times to count. He clings to what little he has.

But he’s willing to relinquish a bit, just so he can say the really important thing.

“Thank you,” he says. “I mean it. For everything. Even the creepy shit, a little. Just. Thanks.”

Reese doesn’t say anything, but his curled hand covers his mouth momentarily, like he’s suppressing a smile or a yawn. “Have you slept since?” he asks.

“A little,” Fusco says. “At the hospital. Just a couple of hours.”

“How’d that go?”

“Not great. Shitty dreams.”

“They’ll pass,” Reese assures him. He inhales. “You’ve been making coffee,” he says, accusingly.

Fusco protests, “I was waiting up for you.”

“And now I’m here. Try to wind down and get some sleep. I’m staying the night.”

“Do I get a say in this?”

“No,” Reese says, pleasantly.

Fusco thinks about fighting it just out of spite, but then realizes how much he doesn’t want to win, how much he doesn’t want to spend the night flinching awake at every sound, feeling for the gun on his nightstand. “There’s more coffee in the pot if you want some,” he says, returning to his room.

“Thank you, Lionel.”

Back in his room, he starts to ease himself out of his clothes. His muscles and joints are still sore; he wonders if he should take another shower, let the heat ease him up, dent his water bill a little more. He’s definitely not going to sleep, not like this, no matter how tired he’s getting. Not with caffeine speeding through him, making him edgy and panicked.

Of course, there’s Reese to think about.

“You want something for your face?” he calls through the closed door. “I don’t know if I have much, but there’s rubbing alcohol and a first-aid kit in the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” Reese says again.

Fusco listens in, hears the bathroom door open, the clatter of plastic pill bottles as Reese ransacks the medicine cabinet, his footsteps as he stalks back out into the living room. Without really thinking about it, Fusco has pulled on the same t-shirt and boxers he wore last time Reese was here.

He guesses he just really wants a do-over right now.

When he comes out, Reese is sitting at the coffee table, looking into the first-aid kit, perturbed. He holds up a scroll of Batman-themed Band-Aids in response to Fusco’s puzzled stare. “I am not wearing these on my face,” he says, firmly.

“Sorry about that. They’re my son’s.”

“I’m sure,” he says. There’s a teasing glint in his eye.

Fusco ignores him. “Take them or leave them. They’re all I’ve got.”

“I’ll go without,” Reese says. He gives Fusco a very long look, traveling up and down bare arms and legs, drawn to the dark blossoms of bruises and scrapes. “What about you?”

“Took care of most of it at the hospital,” he says as Reese takes his hand, traces the raw sign the cuffs left on his wrist. Reese turns his hand palm up, staring at the lines and creases like he’s trying to read their halting, tentative future. “I don’t even remember getting half of these.”

Reese presses his mouth to the center of Fusco’s palm for a long second. He straightens up, doesn’t let go of Fusco’s hand. His eyes are plaintive.

Fusco laughs nervously. “Are you going to go crazy again?” he asks.

Reese doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring at him, eyes wide and yawning with need.

“Well?” Fusco asks, voice gone very, very soft. “Are you?”

Reese leans forward with a sigh, head resting against Fusco’s stomach, arms wrapped around him. It’s not forceful, not a grab. He doesn’t even stand; he just hangs on. “Where?” Reese asks.

“Not here. My room.”

Reese’s fingers are tangling in the back of Fusco’s shirt, one hand dragging resolutely down. “When I first saw you cuffed to that chair,” he says, “I thought you had already died. I thought I was too late.”

Fusco’s not sure what to say to that. He knows the gravity of that confession, the fears and hopes it represents. He’s not sure if he can match those. He’s not sure he has it in him to talk about how he fears for Reese when he should fear for himself, how he never stopped missing Reese in the months they weren’t talking, how he was about to die and when he was running through the things and the people that were important to him, Reese kept coming up and coming up. He doesn’t know how to say any of that. What he does say is, “Get in my goddamn bed.”

That works.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND NOW, BACK TO MY REGULARLY SCHEDULED SHENANIGANS.
> 
> Also, this is the chapter with the dicks in it.

It’s funny because this is almost business as usual – Reese hauling him around. It happens enough that Fusco’s kind of gotten used to it, to the point where, when Reese pulls him into the darkened bedroom and shoves him to the mattress, Fusco’s first sleepy instinct is to wonder what he wants _this time_. Then Reese follows him down, covers Fusco’s body with his own, and it all suddenly registers.

Whatever happens now, they’re not going to be able to take back.

Reese pushes up the front of his shirt, drags the boxers down to just below his hips before Fusco grabs his wrist and Reese stops cold, brow furrowed with worry. He actually draws back a little, flinches away, but Fusco holds on to him. “You first,” Fusco says, firmly.

Reese half-smiles at him with relief, sits back on his haunches and starts to unbutton his jacket. “You shy, Lionel?”

Fusco shrugs, plucks at the front of his t-shirt. “I’m in my underwear; you’re in a suit. I’m just giving you a chance to catch up, guy.”

Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but shyness isn’t involved. He was never that kind of person in the first place and Reese has already invaded Fusco’s life to such an extent that there’s almost nothing left to be embarrassed about. It’s just that he can’t bear to be that vulnerable, to be stripped down and defenseless while Reese sits there in his thousand dollar suit, that smug look plastered on his face. If Fusco is going to make a goddamn fool of himself tonight, and he’s resigned himself to _that_ foregone conclusion, then he is going to drag Reese down with him.

Except, of course, Reese starts stripping away his suit like it means nothing to him. It might not. Fusco guesses that maybe one thousand dollars was kind of a big estimate when the suit was in pristine condition. Now, watching the jacket ripple as it falls off Reese’s shoulders, Fusco can see the rips and tears, the scuffs, the dirt rubbed deep in one elbow, the little starburst of gunpowder on the right cuff. Reese puts the jacket on the floor and lays it out, flat, like the ghost of the man who wore it, so no wrinkles can set in.

Reese starts to flick open the buttons on his white shirt, collar and cuffs now stained with little flecks and splotches of blood. He wears them like they’re a tie and cufflinks, and he keeps shooting Fusco these sly, proud little glances whenever he catches him looking. When Reese goes to shrug his way out of the shirt, his whole face clenches up and he groans, and before he’s really thought about it, Fusco is right beside him, helping Reese out of his shirt. “You okay?” he asks, unbuttoning the cuff and pulling the whole sleeve over Reese’s wrist.

“Yeah,” Reese sighs, breath catching in his throat. “Threw out my shoulder hitting a guy with a golf club. Long story.”

Fusco peels the last of the shirt off of Reese, offers it to him to fold, throws it aside when Reese rejects it. “I’ve got time. And I kinda want to hear that one.”

“Not now.” Reese thinks a moment. “Not ever. You need to stop asking me about these things.” He goes to unbutton his pants and flinches as another spasm wracks his back.

This is how Fusco winds up undressing Reese. It’s a clear-cut task, which is helpful. It allows him to see things objectively for a while, as he’s focused on buttons and zippers and shoelaces. He sees the skin he’s unveiling, the perfect, even tan fading into smooth, pale, tender skin on his hard-muscled stomach and thighs, all marred with candy-stripe scars, pink and white. He sees the more recent injuries, a collection of bruises and a scrape on Reese’s knee that he can’t help but touch. He sees the spots where Reese is going gray and soft, aging from savage killing machine into something kinder.

As each article falls away, Fusco hands them off to Reese, who folds his clothes fast, before they have time to crease, and leaves them in a neat pile at the foot of the bed. This is how Fusco comes to suspect that Reese is nervous.

Naked, Reese is all pride and lean muscle, and now Fusco is intimidated because he knows that he won’t look like that. But then Reese drags him close again and snarls in his ear, “Your turn,” and he figures that that nobody here gives a fuck what he looks like. His clothes are off in a matter of seconds, strewn across the bed with no particular care, and when Fusco mutters “Oh, I see how it is,” Reese tells him, almost playfully, “You don’t mind,” and flips him onto his belly. In a moment, Reese descends upon him, chest to back, hips in line and slides his arms over Fusco’s arms, his legs between Fusco’s legs, until Reese has become a warm, hard-bodied shell resting over him protectively.

When Reese begins to touch him, it’s with no particular drive or aim, no obvious dive between his thighs. It’s a soft, wandering touch, never stopping in the same place for longer than a few seconds, never doing more than pinching or tickling to make Fusco squirm beneath him. Fusco, hands braced against the mattress, body lifted so Reese’s hands can slip over his chest and stomach unimpeded, wants very badly to be annoyed or sarcastic about something, but he’s getting hard and there’s an excitable tremor in Reese’s fingertips that makes Fusco love him a little.

Reese kisses the back of Fusco’s neck and he shivers involuntarily, snaps his hips back against Reese with a whine. Reese presses close, tucks his face away in the bend of Fusco’s shoulder, and Fusco is half-surprised to find him hard too, rubbing against his ass in a light, shallow kind of way. He doesn’t know why that, of all things, should be surprising. Maybe he thought Reese was above that, somehow. Fusco’s glad he isn’t.

Gradually, it becomes apparent, as Reese’s hands pause over each small injury, that his wounds are being catalogued. Each time he finds a bruise or a cut or a scrape or even an old scar, Reese’s fingers probe, feeling out the shape of it, the extent of the damage. Each time, he lets out a quiet, angry rumble.

“Hey,” Fusco says, trying to lighten Reese’s mood. “At least I’m not dead.”

Reese groans, a shuddering and miserable noise, and bites at Fusco’s shoulder, wraps tight around him. When Fusco tries to protest, Reese wraps one strong, long-fingered hand around his cock and gives it a few languid strokes and soon Fusco is whimpering into the rumpled bedspread. He tries to hold it back, tightens his chest and presses his lips together, but the sounds keep escaping in sharp, uncontrollable bursts.

“It’s alright,” Reese whispers to him. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

Fusco buries his face in the comforter, sinks his teeth in, suppressing every moan.

“Don’t do that.” He rolls onto his side, brings Fusco with him. He begins to push his hips against him, slides one thigh between Fusco’s legs and keeps it moving until Fusco starts to whine at the back of his throat and buck his hips fitfully. “Don’t keep quiet. I like you talking.”

Fusco’s jaw relaxes slowly until the makeshift gag slips free and the comforter falls back into place. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

They start, for real this time. Reese sets the rhythm, slow and exploratory. Reese’s cock is pressed tight between them, between his own stomach and the small of Fusco’s back, and he keeps gliding it against their skin, gradually slickening with sweat. Each time, Reese lets out a long, shivery gasp in Fusco’s ear, like he’s barely keeping it together.

After a while, Fusco becomes nervous and asks, “You’re not gonna fuck me, are you?”

Reese makes a desperate sound and suddenly tenses. “No,” he says, voice tight like there’s nothing he wants more. “Not unless you want me to.”

Too quickly, he replies, “I don’t want you to.” He half-regrets it the moment he says it. He’s definitely not sure about it, but maybe he wouldn’t mind. Maybe he’d like it. Momentarily, he thinks of Reese pinning him down, pounding into him until he’s raw, fucking every last scream and cry out of him until he doesn’t have to force himself to be silent. The thought makes him squeeze his eyes shut and grit his teeth until his brain calms down and the feel of Reese’s hand on his dick stops being so goddamn torturous.

They’re still trying to figure this out, how the two of them fit together, what makes them tick. They find that they’re both more eager to please than their partner would like. Fusco keeps trying to roll over to face him, keeps trying to slide a calloused hand between their bodies to touch Reese. Every time, Reese grabs hold of him, seizes his wrists and holds them secure against Fusco’s chest, spoons up against him and clings tight until Fusco stops struggling. The only thing Reese allows him to do is push back to meet every thrust of his hips, and that’s only because Reese seems powerless to stop it. He tries, grabs at Fusco’s hips and forces him to lie still and controlled, but what he always winds up doing is dragging Fusco back against him over and over, like Reese can’t quite control himself.

Fusco’s biggest problem with Reese’s behavior is that he enjoys it too much. He wants to hate Reese’s playful touches, his arrogance, his unstoppable confidence in this weird, weird situation, the way being kissed on the neck is starting to not make Fusco flinch so much. The way Reese eagerly wrings every sound he can out of Fusco’s tight-lipped mouth.

It’s not bad, none of it is bad, but Fusco has nothing to complain about, and it’s making him afraid that he’ll say something stupid now. Something like “Kiss me,” or “You can stay, after,” or “If you try to fuck me right now, I won’t stop you.” And that’d just be disastrous.

Reese peers over Fusco’s shoulder, takes one glance at his downturned mouth and immediately goes still. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Fusco rasps as Reese’s fingers circle the base of his cock and squeeze gently, forcing him to ride the edge for a moment. He presses his ass back, tries to spur Reese into moving again, but he is immobile, happy to lie motionless beside him until Reese has satisfied himself that Fusco is ready to continue.

“You sure?” Reese lets go of him completely, and Fusco cries out, thrusts uselessly at the air.

“I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure,” he whines, pushing back against Reese insistently. “Come on.”

Reese shifts so he can look Fusco in the face, pats his cheek until Fusco opens his eyes and looks right at him. “Lionel,” he says, dead serious. “Are you just letting me do this because you have a head injury?”

Fusco jams his elbow between Reese’s ribs in response, keeps jabbing it into him until Reese pulls him close and starts laughing in his ear. He makes a fist around Fusco’s cock again, starts jerking him off slow and steady.

“He was an assistant district attorney,” Reese says suddenly.

The words give Fusco’s brain whiplash. “What?”

“An assistant DA. HR needed a replacement for Diane Hansen. Remember Diane Hansen?”

It takes him a while to remember. Reese starts to give this little flick of the wrist as he rubs from base to tip, base to tip, grip wet with spit, and all Fusco can manage is a grunt of acknowledgment.

“I hadn’t thought of her in a long while. Do you know what happened to her? Well, prison. That’s a silly question. Anyway, this new guy. I’ve forgotten his name already. Ben…something.”

He pauses to spit in his own palm, make his hand slicker and wetter, then carries on.

“He’s the one who gave the order to have you killed. You and the journalist. Novak didn’t know that, but Novak’s boss did. They try to keep it all a secret by making it a chain of information, but really, really, Lionel, it just prolongs the inevitable. I was always going to find them. And I found him, this Ben. Benjamin Hertzler; that was his name. He’d gone to a resort town in New England to wait for the whole thing to blow over. Kind of a trek, but I made it. It’s the off season up there, so when I found him, he was almost alone out on the green, playing a leisurely 18 holes with his bodyguard.” Reese’s mouth brushes against the shell of Fusco’s ear, and Fusco notices with mild horror that Reese’s movements against him have become more erratic, more desperate. What’s slightly worse is that he knows where this story is going, and he’s still pushing into Reese’s hand with the same eager need.

Reese continues, “I didn’t really have a plan until I saw him. I thought maybe I’d just threaten him, make it clear you were off-limits. It would have been good to know who he was, keep an eye on him. That would have been the smart thing to do. But I saw him there, picking out his putter, and I couldn’t let him go. Because he’d given the order to end your life and he _just didn’t care_.”

He stops the movement of his hand and settles for a calm, pulsing squeeze while the rough pad of his thumb drags across the sensitive head. Fusco lets out an unsteady groan and rocks back against him hard. Reese sighs contentedly.

“I took his bodyguard on first. He was well-trained. Here, feel this.” He guides Fusco’s hand back to the carved jut of his own ribs, the dark swell of a mass of bruises. “Feel that? He got me there. I thought he cracked something at first. But I took him down. It was almost easy. Then I went for the assistant DA. And I laid into him with that putter.” He’s got his face tucked deep against Fusco’s neck, nuzzling there. “Lionel, I couldn’t stop.”

“Did you kill him?”

He feels Reese’s lips curve against him. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he pants. “I never know, with you.”

“Maybe that’s better,” Reese says, brushing his thumb against the slit over and over again. “I’d never want to take away that sense of mystery.”

He shudders, feels his body begin to crumple in on himself as he tenses, bone deep, in anticipation of the edge. “You need to lay off, or I’m gonna…”

“Good,” says Reese, increasing his efforts. “That’s good. Let it happen.”

Fusco’s right on the brink now and it’s terrifying him. They’ve ruined this. They had a perfectly good codependent non-friendship going and now, in the afterglow, once the excitement wears off, things are going to become painfully unambiguous. But then he digs his fingertips into Reese’s bruises, realizes that they’re _his_ bruises and Reese is wearing them right now because he gives a damn about whether Fusco lives or dies. He closes his eyes, feels Reese’s presence with startling clarity, curses himself for being so fucking stupid.

This hasn’t been ambiguous for either of them in a long, long time.

Biting down on his lip to ensure he doesn’t say anything stupid, Fusco lets it happen. Reese clutches at him while the aftershocks set him twitching, uncontrolled and overstimulated. Reese clutches at him for a long while.

Tangled in limbs that are slimmer and longer and stronger than his, Fusco begins to shift and roll to face him. After a time, Reese allows it, guiding him closer, until the two of them are lying on their sides, chest to chest. “I’m going to kiss you,” Reese says, calmly.

He sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

There’s less biting than last time. That’s a shame. Fusco kind of misses the biting. Still, this is nice too. Reese curls one hand around the back of his neck, holds him in place, and just goes at him, soft and wet. He hasn’t been kissed like that in a while and it’s good. At the very least, it distracts Reese long enough that Fusco can get his hand around Reese’s still-hard cock.

At the first touch, Reese _yelps_ against his mouth, and that’s way more satisfying than any kiss.

Fusco shoves him flat on his back and clambers on top of him, straddling his legs. He admits, his technique is less nuanced and more savagely direct than Reese’s, but judging from the way Reese bucks furiously into his hand with every indelicate stroke, Fusco’s thinking maybe Reese doesn’t mind so much. Reese’s fingers sink into Fusco’s thighs, set about making bruises.

Reese keeps opening his mouth like he wants to say something, then snapping it shut like he’s afraid of what’s going to come out. “Lionel,” he tries, but it just dissolves into whimpers, and Reese is only able to stop himself when he bites down on his lip.

Fusco takes pity on him, clamps his free hand over Reese’s mouth. “Try not to say something stupid,” he pleads. He presses down, makes his grip a tight, rough hole for Reese to fuck, and Reese can’t seem to stop himself from pushing into it again and again and again until Reese comes over his hand and collapses with a moan. Fusco can hear muffled words, feel Reese’s mouth moving against his palm, but he doesn’t let up, doesn’t really want to hear it. And Reese doesn’t really want him to hear it, so they’re kind of in agreement on this one thing.

Finally, the muscles in Reese’s legs stop straining, and he falls limp, taking deep, satisfied breaths and Fusco thinks it’s probably safe to let him talk now. He uncovers Reese’s mouth and lies down beside him, and in an instant Reese’s arm is thrown over him like a security blanket. Immediately, he’s dragged back against Reese’s hot, solid chest and held possessively.

“I didn’t know you were going to be such a girl about this,” Fusco mutters.

 “I didn’t know you were going to have such a huge scar on your ass.”

Fusco reaches back and squeezes the mass of bruises on Reese’s ribs, revels in his hiss of pain. “Hey, don’t be a dick. I got that saving a child. Have a little respect.”

Reese slides one leg over Fusco’s hip. “I do.”

Fusco allows himself to settle back against him and tries not to grin like an idiot so much. “So,” he says as they settle in, “that story you told me wasn’t very long.”

“I guess not,” Reese says.

He presses his face into Fusco’s hair and breathes for a long moment.

They’re both warm and half asleep when Reese whispers, “You make me feel very normal.”

Fusco mumbles, voice hoarse with exhaustion, “You make me feel the exact opposite of that.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a point in time when I thought this fic was going to be a one-shot. A point in time when I thought this fic would be 4,000 words long, max. A point in time when I actually believed that this fic would be finished before the finale aired.
> 
> It's all very funny, in retrospect.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with me this long, left me words of encouragement, or just took a chance and clicked. I love you all. <3

He doesn’t actually get much rest that night. Reese won’t stop touching him, keeps excitedly stroking his back and kissing him just after his eyes have drifted shut. Fusco actually manages to doze off a few times, only for Reese to shake him back to wakefulness, face twisted with worry. “I had to know,” he says as Fusco glowers at him, “I had to be sure.”

Finally, Fusco catches him in a headlock of sorts, holds him close, and Reese settles down into a fitful doze.

In the morning, Reese is still there, which is surprising. He’d been expecting Reese to slip away sometime in the night. Hoping that he would, sort of. Not that he doesn’t want Reese around. He does, more than he expected to. He just doesn’t want to hash out the reasons behind what happened last night. He hopes they don’t wind up having to drag each other through that humiliating conversation. Fusco’s not sure if either of them have it in them.

Reese’s arm is draped across his back, his fingers compulsively pressing indents in Fusco’s skin. When Fusco first tries to get up, Reese clamps onto him like a steel trap, eyes snapping open, pupils contracting to dark pinpricks. It takes a long moment for him to relax, for his eyes to look less like an animal’s. Reese smiles at him, an odd, shaky thing, at once sweetly unsure and sharklike.

Fusco can’t quite bring himself to look away. He just pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, never breaking eye contact, and Reese’s arm begrudgingly slides away from his back. Fusco keeps moving away, slow and steady, until Reese is no longer touching him and his hand slips off Fusco’s back and falls to the mattress with a thump. All at once, Reese withdraws, pulls his arm back to his side and closes his eyes again, rolling over onto his other side, facing away from Fusco.

Fusco stares at the stiff line of Reese’s back until he’s certain Reese won’t turn back to him and then staggers, stiff-legged and wincing, to the bathroom.

In the shower, he realizes that by the time he gets out, Reese will have left. Reese won’t want to talk about this any more than Fusco does, and he’ll run out now, while the going’s good. It’s fine by Fusco. He needs some time to think.

There have to be rules, he thinks, standing under the gush of warm water, scrubbing at his scalp. He rolls his shoulders, hears the joints pop. He didn’t lay down rules right away when he started letting Reese into his house, and everything spiraled out of control. If he makes himself clear, right from the start, it could prevent another incident.

Somehow it never occurs to him that this could be anything but the start. Of course they’re doing this again. It’s not even a question.

Reese has to call ahead of time. Reese has to _knock_. Reese is not allowed to break into the apartment.

Nothing happens unless Fusco agrees to it.

No one else gets to know about this. They do not talk about it outside of the apartment.  They do not sleep together outside of the apartment. They do not even touch each other outside of the apartment.

Reese cannot come over on nights when Michael is here. That one’s non-negotiable.

This could work. This could become the new normal. He could hit Reese with these the next time he sees him, and tell him in no uncertain terms that this is how it’s going to be, and then Reese can ignore everything he says and just do whatever the fuck he likes, like always.

He notices weak, rusty splotches swirling in the water around his feet and realizes that he must have ripped a stitch while he was washing his hair. He laughs at himself, low and bitter, as the tremors return. “Lionel, you fuck-up,” he says to himself as he leans hard against the wall, balling his hands into fists.

Later, sitting under the cold stream, still shaking like a leaf, he sees a familiar silhouette against the warped glass of the sliding shower door. It opens just a crack and Reese peers through, still naked, eyes inquisitive. “Can I come in?”

Through chattering teeth, Fusco says, “We need to talk about boundaries.”

What ends up happening is, Reese shuts off the cold water and Fusco asks Reese to fuck him right there on the floor. Reese ignores him, wraps him up in a spare towel and holds him until the bleeding and shaking stops, no matter how much he fights.

It’s okay because Fusco never really wanted to talk about boundaries anyway.

***

It takes a long time for Reese to leave. Not that he doesn't try. He keeps getting up like he means to, throwing on his jacket and tracking down his shoes from under the bed. He'll all but open the door and walk out when suddenly he's back beside Fusco, wrapped around him possessively, tugging off his clothes. It's not even sex anymore; they've pretty much exhausted that as a possibility at this point. Reese just wants to touch him.

Fusco lets him. When Reese seems to expect him to complain, he does, but it's half-hearted. Reese gleefully pins his unresisting limbs and says to him "I'm going soon. Try not to go out and get yourself killed before I come back.”

“Asshole, _you_ were the one who almost got me killed,” he tries to say, but Reese’s lips cover his and all he can do is mumble.

When he finally leaves, Reese is more or less himself again. The only concession to any kind of change between them is that Reese is strange and paranoid and only goes when Fusco finally agrees that the lock on the front door needs replacing because it’s _much_ too easy to pick.

Anyone could just walk right in.

The first thing he does when Reese leaves is make a big pot of coffee and take a little time to warm up, come back to reality.

The second thing he does is call Simmons up to feed him that bullshit story about Novak and company absconding with the blackmail materials and leaving him to rot.

“Why the hell would they do that?” Simmons asks.

Fusco is kind of surprised at how real the indignation in his voice is when he says, “Do I look like a shrink to you?” It’s like a part of him already believes this story and is pissed off at having its integrity challenged.

Already, what happened in the warehouse seems like it happened a lifetime ago. He’s having trouble picking out some of the details. Or maybe that’s the head injury.

When Simmons asks what took him so long to check in and what’s keeping him from being at work right now, Fusco responds by snapping a picture of his own battered face with the phone and sending it to him.

“ _Jesus Christ_. Stay away until you look less like someone went to town on your face with a Louisville Slugger. We don’t need people asking awkward questions about who fucked you up and why.”

“What do I say happened when I come back? Carter’s gonna want to know.”

Simmons scoffs disgustedly. “I don’t care. Say you got it in a bar fight. Say you walked into a door. You’re the liar. You tell me.”

All in all, it goes surprisingly well.

He takes a long pull from his coffee mug, savors the taste, muted by his scalded tongue. He’s not doing too badly, overall. A day ago, he was a beaten, terrified fugitive from organized crime. Now, he’s a beaten, less terrified infiltrator of organized crime.

Also, there’s the other thing.

He’s trying not to think too hard about the other thing. Not because he regrets it, because he doesn’t, but because it’s too bizarre to accept as something that actually happened. It’s bizarre that Reese was interested, bizarre that _he_ was interested, bizarre that Fusco let a dangerous lunatic this deep into his life, bizarre that he doesn’t feel bad about it.

He’s trying to make it seem ordinary, explain it to himself in familiar terms, but somehow “I got laid last night,” doesn’t quite cover it.

His phone lights up again, and he’s all ready to bullshit to Simmons some more, or maybe his ex-wife is calling to ask where the hell he’s been, but it’s not either of them.

“Has he left yet?” Finch asks, sounding brusque.

“Yeah. About twenty minutes ago.” Fusco has a terrible thought. “You weren’t listening to…last night, were you?”

There’s a sharp, affronted exhalation in his ear. “Of course not. I just thought that you’d probably be…er. At this hour.” Finch struggles. “I thought you’d be done by now.”

“Yeah. We are.”

A deeply uncomfortable silence ensues. It’d be uncomfortable even if Finch and Fusco were friends, and Fusco’s isn’t sure that they are. Acquaintances, maybe. Coworkers.

Finch clears his throat. “I don’t know how much he told you…”

“More than I ever wanted to know.”

“But,” Finch continues, not acknowledging the interruption, “you should be pleased to know that your cover remains uncompromised and you should be able to carry on as before.”

“Yeah, he did tell me that.”

“Oh.” There’s a quiet, shuffling sound as Finch shifts in his seat. “We’ll be keeping more of an eye on you as well. Just to make sure this blows over completely without any significant damage to you or your family.”

“Thank you.”

“I think that will be more Mr. Reese’s job than my own, but you’re welcome.”

“Hey, it’s just good to know you’re on board with this,” Fusco says. He toys with his coffee cup nervously. “Not that I don’t think Reese will look out for me and mine, but he scares the hell out of me sometimes. And his track record for doing things that almost get me killed is pretty good these days. I’m alive right now because of a coincidence.”

“Hmm.” Silence falls again. “That _is_ what he told you, isn’t it?”

Fusco swallows a sudden lump in his throat. “Is it not true?”

“I honestly don’t know,” says Finch. “It’s true that the journalist was one of our Numbers and Reese was looking for him. It’s entirely possible that he followed a trail of legitimate information that led him straight to the journalist and your life was saved purely by accident. But the fact remains that I don’t know how he knew that you were part of the group sent to deal with the journalist. And frankly, Detective,” he pauses, sighs, clears his throat. Whatever he’s about to say next, he’s not sure he should be saying it. “Frankly, Fusco, I was never foolish enough to believe that he ever stopped watching over you.”

Fusco pushes the coffee mug away, leans hard against the kitchen counter. “You didn’t just call me to check in, did you?”

“No.” There is that delicate rustling sound again, the sound of Finch’s anxious movements. “He’s very attached to you,” Finch says. It seems inadequate, like he’s trying to wring more meaning out of the statement than it’s capable of holding. “I just want your assurance.” He flounders again, unsure of how to address this thing, half-unwilling to even acknowledge it.

“’If you break her heart, I’ll kill you’?” Fusco suggests.

“Not so aggressive as that. As I mentioned before, your safety has been assured. One of the most dangerous men in the world demands that you be protected; I’m not going to fight with him about it.” He sighs. “But…”

All at once, he catches on. “But who’s going to protect him?”

“I am,” Finch says, firm and automatic. Then, gentler, “You are too. That’s what I need from you.”

It’s a terrifying prospect for a few reasons. Not just because Reese lives a dangerous life, courts a new deadly enemy every week. Not just because Fusco is woefully underequipped to defend Reese from anything that Reese can’t already defend himself from. Not just because Fusco can barely protect himself.

It’s because he’s going to have to protect Reese from Reese, and that’s the scariest thing he can think of. The prospect of going through life reminding Reese to be human, hauling him through some fragile domestic routine until the homicidal fire in his head goes out, risking life and limb to call Reese out every time he does something unforgivable – this is what frightens him.

He’s not a moral authority. Less than a year ago, he was as bad as Reese or worse. He doesn’t have it in him to fight Reese every day until this thing between them collapses or one of them dies. He’s not strong or brave or stupid enough to agree to this.

He should have seen it coming. He does this every time Reese or Finch ask him to do anything dangerous, digs his heels in and protests and groans because he can’t possibly do this. In the end he always gives in and he’s always a little surprised he isn’t dead and he thinks, _Never again_ , but then Reese tells him he did good and the warmth in his chest expands and glows so brightly it feels like it might consume him and the next time Reese asks him for something, he folds at the knee.

By now, it’s textbook. Happens every time. Somehow, though, he still has the gall to be surprised when he says to Finch, in a steady, clear voice, “You have it.”

***

It’s astonishing, the speed with which the old bizarre becomes the new normal.

Less astonishing is the speed with which most of his rules are systematically steamrollered.

Reese does call beforehand on most of the time, but it’s less like two people making plans and more like Reese is just giving Fusco notice for around what time he can expect to have an amorous weirdo on his doorstep. Sometimes he’ll just turn up, blood-spattered and exhausted and unannounced, and Fusco doesn’t have the heart to turn him away.

Fusco half-suspects that Reese’s insistence that the locks be changed from month to month is becoming less of an attempt to ensure Fusco’s safety and more of a personal challenge. He caught Reese timing himself once.

Up front, Reese agrees that keeping their relationship confined to the apartment is a good idea. There are fewer distractions this way and they can better ensure that they won’t be seen by anyone that could use the relationship against them. The unspoken aspect of this is that neither of them wants to make Finch uncomfortable. There is no possible reason for either of them to break this rule.

That is, until Reese, keyed up from a recent case and high on adrenaline, abducts Fusco into a men’s room at the precinct for what he later insists was intended to be a routine check-in and they both get carried away.

After that, it stops being a rule and becomes more of a by-appointment kind of thing. Fusco pretends that he fought hard to keep that bit of anarchy from happening, but he knows he’s not kidding anyone.

Reese and Michael are only in the apartment together twice. The first time happens purely by accident, when Fusco’s ex drops Michael off an hour early without telling him. Luckily, everyone’s wearing clothes, Reese gets introduced as a friend of Fusco’s who was _just leaving_ , and while Fusco’s ex-wife shoots curious glances in Reese’s direction, Michael never thinks anything of it.

The second time, Reese breaks in late at night, while Michael’s already asleep. Reese is sloppy drunk and fiercely demanding, and Fusco threatens to shoot him.

They have their bad days.

Neither one of them is under the impression that there’s any kind of stability here. Sometimes Fusco catches himself plotting how he’d get rid of Reese if he had to. Sometimes Fusco will say something that makes Reese go deadly quiet and his eyes turn flinty and dead. It’s not safe or healthy. It’s probably not even legal. On occasion, Fusco wonders if they’re quite happy.

But then, that’s not what they’re aiming for. They never sought happiness in each other, not permanence, not perfection, not beauty, not true love.

They just kind of like each other.

The one dangling thread remaining from that time Fusco almost died is the envelope of pictures. Reese hasn’t used them yet, and Fusco knows this because he’s pretty sure something like that would make the news, or at least travel down the grapevine. The other reason he knows is that every so often, Reese gives them back to him. Never for very long, always dropped off in a hurry. Just in brief stretches of a few days, just long enough to make Fusco worry about what’s happening. He’s gathered enough information over the course of repeat incidents to know that the pictures become his again on the days when Reese truly believes that whatever case he’s working on right now may kill him.

Because of this, Fusco has come to think of the pictures as a life insurance policy. Because of this, he grows to hate the sight of them. Every time he receives them becomes an endless period of waiting impatiently for Reese to come back and take them away from him.

Still he can’t stop himself from looking through them, time to time. He’s not supposed to but Fusco figures that, since he almost died because of the stupid things, he might as well take a look. He’s been through the photos countless times, nearly has the stack memorized, frame by frame. He’s looking for one in particular. But he hasn’t seen it since the first time Novak showed it to him.

Common sense would say that Reese burned that picture to protect them both, to hide the link between them. That would be the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, the thing Finch would recommend. Hell, the thing _Fusco_ would recommend.

But Fusco knows a few things about Reese. He knows Reese likes to stay the night. He knows Reese gets lonely. He knows Reese sent him flowers that one time, ages ago, before either of them knew why Reese follows Fusco. It’s a scary idea, but Fusco thinks that Reese might be a romantic, that it might not sit right with him to destroy the only picture in existence of the two of them together.

It’s an unfounded thought. Maybe even an insulting one, given what it implies about Reese’s intelligence. Fusco would dismiss it off-hand if there wasn’t a sentimental part of him that wants it to be true.

But he isn’t asking, and Reese isn’t telling, and that is as it should be. Fusco doesn’t even know what Reese would do with it if he had it, isn’t even sure he wants to know.

He keeps thinking that up until the day, years later, when he sees a creased and faded photo tacked to the wall at Reese’s place.


End file.
